The Sunday Sermonette – Wasps and Honey.

Before learning to drive, my Schwinn bike and I were best friends. We explored every street in the College Park Subdivision and admired the grand homes on Gulfport’s Service Drive. When we tired of those haunts, we looked north to wet our curiosities. One day, we puffed up one side of the old Handsboro drawbridge, then dashed down the other, as we headed toward the next drawbridge that spanned the Industrial Seaway. Little did we know, a new adventure beckoned at the foot of that bridge.

To the west, an old footpath led through the woods. Warm winter sunlight cast long, dancing shadows across the path and glinted atop the waters of the seaway that hugged it. Loving nature as I did and still do, I rode as if flying. Arms out. Pedaling fast. The crisp breeze whispered through my hair, and pines scented the air. I had not a care in the world. Then, suddenly, I saw the path had caved in up ahead. Slamming on my brakes, I got off my bike to see if anything was in the hole the cave-in created. There was!

Grinning at me in all its bleached-white, skeletal glory was a cow’s skull. Patches of hide still covered its skeletal body; its bony legs stiff. But what was inside its ribcage intrigued me the most—an abandoned wasp nest. In a battered cathedral of bones, it hung like a fragile cathedral of paper, its chambers emptied of its fierce congregation. Thinking back about the poor cow’s bones, I still see them as nothing more than symbols of decay and death. Yet the wasps saw them as something else: a new home for their young. Their nest in the bones is a striking metaphor for renewal. It reminds us that Father God can bring forth new life, even in places marked by death.

In the Book of Judges, we are introduced to a man who also found something unusual in the carcass of a dead lion. That man was Sampson. At his birth, an angel instructed his parents to rear him as a Nazirite. As one, Sampson took a vow to abstain from wine, never to cut his hair, and to never touch any dead person or thing. This vow symbolized holiness, separation from worldly pleasures, and devotion to Godly service.

Samson’s strength was legendary. Judges 14 tells us of his feats, such as killing thousands of Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, and a raging lion with his bare hands. Months after he had killed the lion, Samson found a succulent honeycone inside its decaying carcass. He was hungry, forsook one of his vows, and ate the honey. “But can something sweet come out of decay?” you ask. His discovery was the basis for his biblical riddle: “Out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet.” The dead lion, once strong but now dead and unclean, became a place where sweetness was found.

In our lives, “honey from decay” represents how Father God can bring good out of the broken, painful, disappointing, and shameful places we find ourselves in. Our past failures can foster wisdom. And even though those failures are behind us, their lessons still feed us. Old wounds can teach us compassion. Our pain—mental or physical—that we survived can make us gentler, kinder to others. Our broken relationships can teach discernment, which helps us to mature.

During death and grief, our faith can either wither or deepen and grow. What feels empty can become a place where Father God reveals His comfort. The struggles we overcome can help strengthen our testimony. What tried to destroy us becomes something that strengthens someone else. And dreams delayed help build patience—waiting may feel like itchy decay, but it produces the grit that molds our character.

Still, even though Samson reached into a place of death and found sweetness, that does not mean the dead thing was good. It does show, however, that Father God can allow something useful like “honey” to come from the decay in our lives. Samson’s story also teaches caution, too. Not everything sweet is safe.

Sometimes, what appears to be a sweet blessing can be harmful if it comes from places we know we should avoid. Success earned through dishonesty, a tempting relationship that seems sweet but causes us to compromise our morals, or a seemingly harmless habit that turns destructive—these things can lead us down a path we will later regret.

The Book of Proverbs tells us, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Yes, Father God can bring honey from decay, but we must not make a home in dead places. We, as His children, can receive the lesson and reap the wisdom, but we should leave the carcass behind.

On that winter day long ago, I left the cow carcass behind. Inside was a wasp’s nest, which could have been dangerous if I’d discovered it in the spring; I could have been stung, causing great pain or even death. Sampson, however, discovered sweet-tasting honey inside a lion’s carcass. In both cases, death and decay became a shelter for new life. His discovery turned death into a riddle about sweetness and strength; mine turned death into a reminder that decay can hide danger.

Ponder this and go forth.