Today I had a couple of 'prophetic' words. Here they are:
The first one...
WHICH IS STRONGER - THE LION OR THE BEE?
I was out walking in nature this morning, when a picture dropped suddenly into my mind. It wasn’t a pleasant image at all; it was a dead body…and out of the corpse of the person were coming a swarm of bees.
Immediately, my mind made the connection with the story in Judges 14 where the Israelite hero, Samson, kills a lion with his bare hands. Later, returning along the same path he happens upon the carcass of the lion and notices that a swarm of bees have created a hive in it and there is honey for food.
He uses this experience to pose the following riddle:
“Out of the eater, something to eat;
out of the strong, something sweet.”
Here is what came to me...
We have changed from one era to another.
The era of the lion is over.
Human dependence on strength of will, intellect and personality to garner success cannot sustain life.
The 'lions' are dead.
Now is the time for the emergence of bees.
See the dead lion; it has been slain. The king of beasts will not rise again. The way of superior power, of dominance, at the apex of the food chain, at the top of the hierarchy is already spiritually dead. Its time is over. Some people hope to resurrect the lion but it is too late for that. The carcass is well advanced in decomposition.
Empire is over. Dominance is dead.
The lion way of doing life is a carcass.
But…on our return we can see something new and unforeseen.
Out of the eater there is something to eat. Out of the strong there is something sweet.
There is another life-form. Not remotely like the lion. It is tiny and it lives in a swarm.
It builds an interconnected network that thrums with life.
Does a dead lion produce anything except rotting meat and a flea-bitten pelt?
Do bees produce anything?
You can answer that one yourself.
Let me close with one final question:
Which is stronger and more powerful—the lion or the bees?
Now for the second 'prophetic word' I got...
WHAT IS THE KEY TO 2021?
I don’t really do the prophetic significance of numbers but here is something that came to me out of the blue.
We have just emerged out of 2020. By heck it was different than what we imagined!
It was supposed to be the year of 2020 vision (how predictable). Was it? Probably, but not how we imagined, right? We see more clearly now but maybe we wish we didn’t. It can be dismaying to see how the world is.
2021? Will it be any different? Does it mean anything?
I wasn’t particularly looking for any meaning but it came to me this morning that 21 is the year (in Western culture anyway) of ‘coming of age.’
One of the symbols given at a 21st birthday is a key, on a card or a gilded key. For young people it may be the key to a car, even a house; it certainly represents permission given to step into the world of adulthood.
2021 offers us a key. A symbolic key or a real key (it depends on your faith). 2021 contains an invitation to step into maturity, into permission. To get into the vehicle that your Father has given you and begin to drive it. To step across the threshold into a new sphere of belonging but also of taking responsibility. It is the legal age to do things that are not suitable for the immature.
...We are loved but can we be trusted with the keys?
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