While at family camp in Medora this week, I was waiting for my husband and son to return from hiking up a steep hillside.
I noticed an ant hill in the grass by the side of the trail.
The colorful pebbles and bits of sand they were using to make their hill higher caught my eye, but it was so small compared to the larger hillside that it was laughable.
The lessons at camp that day had hit on our inability to earn salvation with our good works. I totally agree with this and have written about salvation by faith alone for this column many times, but the message still irks me sometimes.
As I watched those ants carrying their grains of sand, I wondered why.
I am good at obeying. I am good at achieving. I am good at getting the right answers. I guess I don’t like being face to face with the fact that what I am good at can’t earn me the thing I most desire. I could never do enough righteous things to be declared fit for eternal life.
Scripture is clear. “Whoever believes has eternal life.” And “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The only thing I earn with my actions is death. Eternal life is a gift freely given.
Like the ants, however, I continue to haul pieces of sand and rock into the places where I think they need to go, making my own hill. In the shadow of Calvary’s Hill, however, it is laughable.
I sympathize with that young man who ran up to Jesus with the burning question: “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
Jesus plainly answers, “There is only one who is good.” The implied part is, “and it isn’t you.”
This stings like an ant bite.
The Proverbs say, “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.” I always thought the lesson to be learned there was the same one Aesop proposed in his story about the Ants and the Grasshopper, but perhaps there’s even more to be learned while considering ants.
All the work in the world only amounts to having enough food at harvest time, but it adds nothing to the eternal life account.
An ant’s hill can be disturbed any time, but the hill of Calvary purchased eternal life for any who will come to the Savior.
Ants move sand grain by grain
Sarah Dixon Young
to make a mighty hill
which a child disturbs again and again
according to his will.
All my attempts to trust and obey
amount to a little anthill
which Satan disturbs again and again
according to his evil will.
Christ walked Gethsemane’s crest
and made a mighty hill
where I can come for peace and rest
to learn His perfect will.
When I submit to carry my cross,
I’m found on the sepulcher’s hill
where He raises me up again and again
alive in His perfect will.
Sarah Dixon Young 