THE GATHERING TIME AND THE STORING TIME
THE GATHERING TIME AND THE STORING TIME
When we are well, and able to go about, the varieties of life carry us on in a wonderful way. The varieties of life are like flowers to a bee. You may have observed how a bee is occupied, now with one flower, now with another. It tries every flower. In some it finds no [p. 189] honey, and it flies off to another; but it appears to try every one. The interest is unremitting, time never hangs heavy on the busy bee. Thus in your daily routine of life, you have various things to engage and to interest you, and though you do not find in each honey, that is, real profit - something to carry back to the hive of your heart - I dare say you never feel that time is a burden. But it is very different now, when you are obliged to stay quietly all day in your room, where the flowers or interests are very few, and there is little o no variety. But such a time as this is necessary. The storing time is as necessary for the bee as the gathering time, for how otherwise could the cells in the honeycomb be made? There must be the monotony of building the storehouses as well as the exciting, ever new and endless variety of acquiring stores.
When we walk with the Lord in the ever-changing phases of life, we acquire stores; if we have conscience, seek for stores like the bee, and we learn many and new thoughts of Jesus who is now our manna; but these are only the stores; we require besides to retire into the secret of our hearts, and there in meditation with the Lord to see that we have storehouses for our stores.
It is in seasons like that which you are now passing through, that one finds out whether one really has stores or not. If there be no storehouses, the stores cannot be preserved, but if there be, the stores are there, and they will be forthcoming in the winter - in the day of loneliness. And not only so, but, unlike the bees’ stores, the more your stores are used, the more they will increase, and the larger will be the store-houses, because the larger the place Christ gets in our hearts, the more will He be there. Thus I trust this little retirement, this drawing aside into the desert, may be a very happy season for your soul, and that when I see you, you will be like a hive ready to swarm, so full of life and of honey.