THE BEEKEEPER
by dean krippaehne
April, 2006

I heard the peculiar sounding noise in my kitchen wall, at least, I thought I did. It was kind of faint, a scratching like sound similar to the crackling of slow burning campfire a-hundred feet away or so. Then, just as soon as I had heard it, it seemed to go away. I thought no more about the strange sound for a couple of days until I heard it again in the same area of my kitchen. "What the heck is making that weird noise?" This time it seemed to be coming from a corner of the kitchen up above the cupboards, near the ceiling. My first thought was that maybe a mouse was gnawing on a piece of wood inside the wall or maybe some feisty carpenter ants were parading through their newly carved tunnels. We had been visited a few years earlier by both but I didn't remember either making this particular sound. Again, the sound came, the noise grew, then disappeared.

The next day there it was yet again. That same rustling in my walls only this time it seemed to have grown slightly in intensity. A few more days of head scratching and no mental light bulb clicking on in my brain as this mysterious sound would come and go, led me to call up an old friend who knows a little something about, well, just about everything.

At his suggestion I went outside to inspect the house siding and eves. At or near the point where I thought I was hearing the intrusion I saw something. Bingo! There they were. First there was only one, then two, then three. As I stood there in my back yard for a while I witnessed a continuous flow of bees flying in and out of a small crack in the wood of my house's eves. From the scores of little yellow and black bodies buzzing about, I guessed that they must be building some gigantic mansion in the attic crawl space just above my kitchen.

Immediately, I was off to the hardware store to buy some of that bee-spray-killer stuff. A few dollars later I had my weapon. I rushed home to the crack in the eves where the bees had made their front door. The narrow entrance was about twelve feet off of the ground. I had no intention whatsoever of leaning a ladder up to their front porch and ringing the doorbell. Not in broad daylight. Too risky. The printing on the label of my spray-weapon said that it had a twenty foot range - a distance that I felt relatively secure at. Should something go terribly wrong I could make a quick dash back into the inside safety of my closed-door house. The label also recommended that I wait until after sundown before embarking on my covert mission.

As soon as night time came I gathered my new bee-terminator-spray and crept outside. There was no action at the intruder's front door now. Evidently, they had called it a day and were tucked in until morning. I made my move. With one gallant, fluid motion I raised my can, pressed down on the trigger and emptied the entire contents of deadly foam spray on or near the bee house entrance and then ran inside for cover.

The next day there was only a stray bee or two surveying the damage at the eve entrance and none were going inside or coming out. I though my mission had been a success - until - a few days later when another stream of bees were once again busily constructing their abode. During the next week I would repeat the bee extermination process two more times with the same unsuccessful results. The bees would quiet down for a day or two and then come back in full force. Something else had to be done. It was becoming obvious that this job was more than I was capable of handling on my own.

I then made one of the better decisions I have made in my entire life. I decided to call a professional. I found a bee guy in the yellow pages of the phone book who could not only come to our house and get rid of the bees - he was also going to take the entire hive and do the whole removal process for free! (He said something about wanting to sell the honey/hive...) Anyway, this cool bee guy came over to my house, put on his bee hazmat outfit and proceeded to crawl up into my attic to do his stuff.

A few minutes later he came back down - with no hive in hand. "Well, you've got about a three foot tall by eighteen inches wide hive up in there. It's a big one. I'm going to have to charge you for this after all." he said. "Why?" "Because those aren't honey bees up there - they're wasps!" "And it's a good thing that you called me when you did because they have eaten through the sheet rock of your ceiling and it is now only a paper thin foundation underneath the hive." "What I'm saying is that at any moment the whole hive, wasps and all, could come crashing through onto your kitchen floor."

"Yikes!" Hundreds of bees swarming inside the house is not exactly what my wife, three small children and I would call a desirable event. Man, was I ever glad I called that professional bee guy. It could have been disastrous for my family if I had just gone about trying to fix the problem myself. Within a couple of hours the bee guy had done his work and the wasps were exterminated. Hooray for the beekeeper!

THANK GOD

Sometimes in our lives, inside of each of us, there can be potentially dangerous problems that lie beneath the surface in the hard to get to places of our hearts and minds. Left unattended they can grow and become worse. Even after admitting to ourselves that we have some sinful and destructive stuff inside and even after giving our very best efforts to rid ourselves of those destructive things - many times it is to no avail. In Truth, there is much in us that no matter how hard we try we can't "do it ourselves" - we need to call on a Pro. God works in and through many wonderful psychologists, teachers, counselors and other people to help root out our difficulties and train us in new ways of thinking and living - leading us to walk closer to and in His Light. Thank God that He has provided in Jesus that perfect "Pro" who can exterminate even the worst of what lies beneath - and through Grace has forever cleansed us from what we cannot do alone.

1 John 1:9 (NIV)
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Luke 6:19 (NIV)
and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

Matthew 9:2 (NIV)
Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven."

Matthew 7:3 (NIV)
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Matthew 12:22 (NIV)
Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see

Romans 8:3 (NIV)
For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man.

Romans 8:6 (NIV)
The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace

Matthew 8:3 (NIV)
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured of his leprosy.

Luke 4:40 (NIV)
When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them.

John 3:6 (NIV)
Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.