The ant and the raven

Nomadic cultures, particularly hunter/gatherers, live life in the present tense. Think about it. If your natural environment provides what you need for daily life just hanging there on the trees each morning, there is little incentive, and very little point, in gathering more than you need for that day. I do not mean to imply that it is a life without hardship. Hunting and gathering can be gruelling work, all the more reason to not make it harder than it needs to be. I recently read about the Jesuit missionaries who came to Northern Australia around the 1880s. With a South American commune model in mind the went about trying to establish agricultural communities in the Top End. They chose a reasonable crop for wet conditions; rice, and set about digging irrigation channels and flooding paddies, planting generously. It was backbreaking work in the heat and humidity. They were pleased, if not a little irritated when come harvest, the indigenous people (who hadn't been much interested in helping), returned to the area. But they hadn't come for the rice. They came for the yams. Yams that grow themselves without any cultivation. All you have to do is dig them up.

Hunter gatherer ways seem foolhardy to those of us with a heritage of agriculture. It looks like a refusal to plan for the future. But, consider the passage below; maybe what God wants is for us to learn the lesson of vulnerability and the blessing of depending on him rather than ourselves.

Luke 12:22-31

Then, turning to his disciples, Jesus said, “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear. For life is more than food, and your body more than clothing. Look at the ravens. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for God feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than any birds! Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And if worry can’t accomplish a little thing like that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things? “Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“And don’t be concerned about what to eat and what to drink. Don’t worry about such things. These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world, but your Father already knows your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.

We tend to think of this passage as teaching us not to worry. We take it as reminder that we don't need to be anxious. That's true. But what if it has an even more practical meaning? Right before this passage Jesus tells a parable about a rich fool. In the story the land that the man lives on provides abundantly. He has more than he needs, but instead of easing off he continues to work hard, building bigger and bigger barns to store his plenty. He isn't just planning for the future, he's got more than one season worth and shows no signs of quitting, and in the meantime ignoring his relationship with God and perhaps the needs of his neighbours. And in the end his life is required of him and someone else gets the loot.

Proverbs 6:6-8

Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones.

Learn from their ways and become wise!

Though they have no prince

or governor or ruler to make them work,

they labor hard all summer,

gathering food for the winter.

We know more about the wisdom of the ant. And this is probably what feeds our judgement of hunter/gatherer ways. But, the truth is probably somewhere in the balance. Both the ant and the raven are wise. We miss out too when we swing to just one side of this pendulum. We don't experience the faith of the raven as often as hunter/gatherers do. We quickly see that it is foolish to not plan for the future, but do we also see that Jesus called the man building barns foolish too? Planting rice where yams already grow doesn't make much sense. And it doesn't do much to explain the gospel does it? Instead we could take a moment from our self-induced labour and see that God will provide. There is something about the hunter/gatherer life that God wants to use to reveal his nature and show us how he wants our relationship with him to be. We don't always have to be ants. God loves ravens too.