Have You Ever Been in a dearth?

I watch a bee flit from flower to flower in the garden. This time of year it's a zinnia or some random herb that’s flowering. Sometimes a weed. The days are getting tougher for foragers two months after the summer solstice. Spring with its burst of nectar as things come to life again has passed. We are in the dearth, a period of time between the spring honey flow and the fall honey flow. 

The prettiest flowers have long since faded and the crepe myrtles are dropping their pink blossoms. The heat is relentless. I watch from the cool air conditioned kitchen out the window as morning glories conspire to make fences disappear. A Cyprus vine with its feathery leaves and star shaped bright red flowers devours everything in sight; large shrubs, a trellis, topiaries. I am reluctant to tame it because the hummingbirds visit it every day. Other than this and a determined rambling honeysuckle the garden looks tired and ragged. 

I feel the same this time of year. I heed excessive heat warnings and avoid putting on my bee suite to check on bees made cranky by this season. 

A dearth is a period of lack between seasons of abundance. There aren't many plants available for the bees to forage. In my area of West Tennessee it runs roughly from the last days of July until the goldenrod blooms, early September-ish depending on the weather.  It's when pests can move in or other bees from a stronger colony can take advantage of a weaker one robbing them of all their honey and causing a smaller colony to collapse. 

I stroll out to the bee yard and I think about some times in my life that have felt like that. Among Christians we refer to it as a dry season or walking through a valley in our faith. Times when we may feel God has forgotten us, or worse, abandoned us. When all the promises we’ve been standing on seem to get forgotten and we question everything. When time in prayer feels pointless and we don’t seem to be able to hear from God. When we start to count unanswered prayers instead of blessings. Like bees we can get cranky in a dearth. 

It can happen for a lot of reasons. Maybe we’ve had the rug pulled out from under us and we don’t understand why God has let certain things happen. Maybe we have something in our lives God is trying to deal with. 

We may become physically and emotionally exhausted in trying periods of life leaving us in a weakened state with little energy or even the desire to spend time with God. 

The truth about the Christian life is that we are not walking with the Lord from one mountain peak to another without passing through any valleys. 

Ask any seasoned saint. They’ve been there. Then ask them what they learned. 

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came to earth and went into the wilderness for 40 days. In the garden of Gethsemane we don’t see him getting the answer to his prayer. On the cross he asks God why he’s been abandoned by him. Do we believe our lives should be lived on mountain peaks of joy where we sustain spiritual highs and giddy emotions? If this is the picture of Christianity that has been presented to you, you have been done a disservice. Jesus told us clearly that in this world we will have trouble. We only have to look at the early church to see he wasn’t luring us with false promises of constant happiness in this lifetime. They were persecuted and martyred as they strove to spread the good news. 

The bees behavior changes during a dearth. They don't have what they need. They can be defensive and bad tempered.  I've been there, too. A personal or spiritual dearth at various points along the way. During these seasons I’ve had my morale drop to the point of hopelessness. Days so dark that putting on the mask of everything being okay just wasn’t in me. When I couldn’t seem to find what I needed from God. 

The bees don't stop working during the dearth. It's a difficult period but the entire colony goes on about their work. Nothing comes to a halt during hard times. They do the best they can with the resources they have.  I eventually learned this lesson too. In times of spiritual dryness I now know to lean in. To lean on. To cast my anxiety upon Christ Jesus and bring every thought captive and renew my mind in Christ. In Ephesians Paul tells us to be made new in the attitude of our minds. Our faith isn’t based on our emotions. The feeling that God has abandoned us is exactly zero evidence that such a thing has happened. 

We have this romanticized image of a single bee working feverishly and industriously her entire life without rest. But in A Book of Bees and How to Keep Them, author and beekeeper Sue Hubbell says “Bees look terribly busy.” The reality is that while the colony is busy, individual bees take breaks from work sometimes for hours at a time. Even a bee knows that exhaustion doesn’t serve those around her well. 

During the dearth are the bees aware that the lack of resources is temporary? Does the queen remember that they went through this last year at exactly this same time? Who knows? But what the beekeeper understands is that right around the corner is a period of abundance.

I feel like I've been through all these phases. The mountaintop of spring with the sweet fragrance of answered prayer and feeling as if I've finally figured out the Christian life only to fall into a time of struggle and feelings of defeat. I pray for wisdom because sometimes we need to press on and sometimes we need to rest and regroup. 

Thankfully the Bible is full of examples of heroes of the faith going through the same dry spells and times of doubt that we sometimes experience. Asking some of the hard questions we ask during a dearth. 

In First Kings we see Elijah fleeing from Jezebel and telling God he’d had enough. Dying would be fine. He was over it. But God sent an angel with bread baked over hot coals (I have a lot of questions here. Was the angel baking it on the spot? What bread baking secrets does an angel have?) and some water. Then the angel tells the prophet to get up and eat because the journey is too much for you. 

In Psalms 13 we see David asking if God has forgotten him. In 2 Corinthians Paul describes his feelings of despair to the point he wondered if he could go on. 

We see our heroes of the faith going through the ups and downs and it reminds us that all is not lost when they feel like it is. We can turn a few pages and see the honey flow is right around the corner. The milk and honey flow! We know how those stories turn out so while we sympathize with Abraham or David we have the full picture so we don’t sink down in that part of the story. It can be harder for us in our own lives because we can’t see the flowers being planted in this season.

In the evening I walk out to the beehives to see them coming in from the last flights of the day as the sun sinks low in the sky. The golden light of shortening days shimmers across their wings. Even in the dearth from the outside it looks like all is well. Only the beekeeper knows the truth of what they’re going through but the beekeeper knows things are about to change. Different flowers are about to bloom.