Last week while I was reading on our patio, I noticed something on a small plant that we had in our side yard: a bee swarm!  Hundreds or perhaps thousands of bees were hanging on that little plant.  I was surprised because a couple of days before, I didn’t see them there.  I guessed they came and built a beehive in just a day. To remove the bee swarm, I then called the bee swarm removal technicians, who came with their beekeeping suit.  Before they left, they told me to wait for three to five days before other bees stopped coming.  They explained that the reason other bees would still come was because these bees thought that it was still their home, even though it was no longer there. They were right; for about five days bees still came.

This incident reminds me of what Our Blessed Lord said about what would happen to a human’s heart that remained empty after it was cleansed from evil spirits: it would be re-inhabited!  The problem is that it would not only be re-inhabited by the same spirit, but also by seven other spirits “more wicked than himself” (Matthew 12:43-45).  I found it to be true!  Not always in the form of evil spirits but in the form of bad or sinful habits. I met those who by the grace of God a long time ago experienced cleansing from bad and sinful way of life but years later began to pick up the same old bad and sinful habits.

Just like bees that keep coming back even though their home is no longer there, sinful habits also want to return to their old home.  As Jesus Our Lord said, these habits have a chance of re-entry due to the condition of the house: empty!  The problem is, it is “swept and put in order,” in other words, the house looks nice and presentable. You see, we do not know that our hearts are already empty because we have always made sure that we look right and godly.  It turns out that we look godly, but we’re not godly.  No wonder we want those bees to come back. We miss their honey; we want to taste it again.

Pastor Paul