Mrs. Tee, a missionary mother in China, was thinking somewhat sorrowfully about her children coming home from school for the holidays. Her store cupboard was sadly empty; her jam pots needed refilling, and sugar was so expensive that she had to let the fruit season go by without making her usual supply. What should she give the children during the holidays? Jam, delicious homemade jam, had always been such a standby treat, but this year there would be none. Then what do you think the Lord did?
Summer was over, and Mrs. Tee, who had been housekeeper for a number of fellow workers at a hill resort, came home. She was going to her storeroom when the old servant who had been in charge called her back.
“You had better be very careful how you go in there,” he said, “for the place is full of bees!”
Bees! Bees! What could they be doing in a busy housekeeper’s storeroom? Never connecting their presence with her empty jam pots, Mrs. Tee opened the door slowly and peeked in. Sure enough a swarm of bees had taken possession, finding their way through the little window, and there they were by the hundreds! A droning hum filled the air; and when she could see in the dim light, Mrs. Tee found that the bees were massed over a big honeycomb that almost filled the space between the two shelves.
When it dawned upon her, she could have danced for joy! For was it not the Lord’s own tender, loving way of providing for the holidays? She had not said much about it; perhaps she had not prayed much about it; but her mother’s heart had keenly felt the disappointment of not being able to give the children all she felt they needed. They had to go without jam that year; so the Lord supplied honey, sending the bees to put it on the very shelves of the storeroom, in the sight of the empty jam pots.
The Lord will supply all your needs if you simply trust in Him who is “sweeter than honey.”
ML-10/14/1979