We haven’t had many mosquitoes this year, but we’ve seen a lot of hornets!

Hornets are quite the little opportunists, as I discovered when we lived out in the country on an acreage. All summer long the hornets monopolized our hummingbird feeders, chasing the tiny birds away. The hummingbirds migrated south at the beginning of September, and we left the feeders out for a while longer. The hornets loved that.

We would find their nests everywhere. One year we were picking apples at a friend’s farm. James, a little tyke of four or five at the time, inadvertently stepped on a hornet’s nest on the ground at the base of the tree, and had plenty of stings to show for it.

One summer day, Timothy was emptying the bottle boxes on the deck, and discovered a hornets’ nest in the bottom, effectively gluing one pop bottle to the corner of the box. Not everyone listens to me when I tell them to rinse the bottles out well, before tossing them into the bottle box… The nest was only the size of a medium acorn squash. We tossed it toward the spruce trees in the back yard and thought no more about it.

That was the week before my friend Cheryl’s children stayed with us for a few days. A few days after they left, I crossed the front lawn to take a closer look at a spider web. From the living room window in the early morning sun, when covered with dew, the spider’s web looked like a plastic sandwich bag draped over the grass. It’s a good thing I tend to look down when I’m walking, because before I got to the spider web, I was stopped by something that COULD have been disastrous. A small hole, just big enough for a broom handle to poke into, with a little patch of bare ground around it. The hole had previously been the entrance of a vole tunnel. But now, it was alive with yellow jackets!! They were busily coming and going from that tiny hole, where they had evidently made their nest after we destroyed the one on the deck!

We can learn something from hornets. They are unfazed even by repeated setbacks. Destroy their nest, and they’ll just make a new one. We suffer plenty of setbacks in life, don’t we? Even on a global scale, as we’ve seen in the past year and a half. What do we do when setbacks come?

Two of my daughters lost everything when their home burned down a couple of months ago. A lot of precious, irreplaceable memories went up in smoke that night. Given that it was the middle of the night, and they had only minutes to wake up and get out of the building, my daughters could have been bitter and angry at God for allowing it to happen. Instead, they saw God’s hand of protection in so many ways as they escaped with their lives, their car, and all three of their pets. They are not angry – they are grateful to God for His provision through many friends and relatives, and have set up a new home just around the corner from me.

Hornets act mindlessly, according to their instincts. We have a choice. No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, we can look around and see God’s hand of blessing in everything. Rather than give in to fear and despair, we can trust Him to show us the new path He wants us to take.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
– Proverbs 3:5-6