Ants, ants, and more ants!

I don't know how well any of you remember MacGyver, but I grew up loving that show. One of my favorite episodes was when he went to South America and had to fight billions of soldier ants. These ants had formed a supercolony that was destroying everything in a two-mile wide swath. Villages, horses, the forest, all animals that got in their way - everything they came to, they obliterated.

MacGyver stuck around to defend a plantation with a guy he'd just met. He tried getting water into the irrigation ditches to make little moats. The ants, completely undeterred, chewed the leaves off trees and used them as rafts. He tried burning them, but the rest of them simply waited out the fire. It was only by blowing the dam and flooding the whole plantation that MacGyver was able to get rid of them.

I saw another episode of a show I can't remember where these ants formed bridges out of their bodies. Ants would literally march to their deaths in the ditches and pile up their corpses until the pile was above the water level.

I don't know how much of all this is real or not. In MacGyver, they showed the ants cutting down leaves and floating across the ditches on them, but I don't know about the other feats. Also, so far as I know, these ants don't live in colonies that massive, though the soldier ants really do live in colonies of millions.

The point, though, is that this is the kind of single-mindedness of purpose that is lacking in people in general and the church in particular. The church used to have it. When it started, the people would literally pool all their resources together and do all the good they could with that money. They would support missionaries, feed the poor, and support each other. Many withheld nothing. Many knew they would die one day for sharing their faith, yet continued to do it. There was even a story I heard that as James was being led away to be beheaded, the man who had accused him came up to him, pleaded for forgiveness, accepted Christ, and insisted that it was not right that James should die alone. They were beheaded together. What a testimony that must have been to those who witnessed it! A man who has but to say nothing to save his life instead goes and dies willingly for a faith in God. And the man whom he accused forgives him willingly and leads him to Christ.

Where is that kind of single-mindedness now? Where is that self-sacrifice? Why is it so hard for us to even stop and talk to our brothers and sisters in Christ when they are going through a trial? Why is it so hard for us to confront them in order to help them? Why do we worry about where money will come from if we know we're spending it how God wants us to? Why is it so rare that we help each other out beyond moving furniture? Where is our colony mindset? We should be one big happy family, ruled by one big happy God. Little Christian ants, willing to do whatever He bids us to do to advance His kingdom. How many of us would walk through fire for Him, though? How many of us would even walk through a humiliation for Him?