If you look at the sixth verse of the sixth chapter of Proverbs, you will read: “Go to the ant, you lazy one; consider the ways of him and be wise.” A sloth, you know, is a man, woman or child, who does not love to read or do any kind of work, but likes to sleep or be idle all day. Do you think you ever met one?
Now see what the Bible tells the lazy person to do. He asks her to go to the little ant and “consider his ways”, that is, watch and see what he does. Has he ever watched the ants when they were busy at work? It will give you a very pleasant job for half an hour on a summer’s day. In some places you can see small ant mounds scattered about, so close together that you can hardly step on them without stepping on them; and you can find other places where there are not so many, but where the hills are much bigger. I have seen them so large that you could hardly walk over one of them without touching it with your foot and breaking a part of it. And how busy the little creatures are! Just kneel in the grass next to them and watch them work! You will see a little one crawling as fast as he can, with a grain of sand in his mouth, maybe as big as his head. He does not stop to rest, but when he has taken his grain to help build the hill, he goes for another. You can watch them all day and never see them idle.
You see why God tells the lazy person to go and look at the little ants: it is that when he sees them so busy, he can be ashamed of himself for being idle, and learn to be “wise” or diligent in everything he undertakes. . I don’t think he could help but go to work, after looking at them for a while. The ants seem to be very happy, and I think it is because they are very busy. God has not put anyone in this world to be inactive: even children have something to do. The interior of an anthill is very curious, but it is not easy to examine it without destroying all the work that the little insects have taken so much pains to finish. There is a species of ant in hot climates that builds for itself hills as high as a man. They are not made of sand, but of a kind of clay; and it has a large number of cells or apartments, and many winding passages leading from one part to another. All this is done, as the Bible says, without “guide, supervisor or ruler”; that is, they have no one to tell them how to do it. God gives them ability like honey bees to build the beautiful cells you have so often admired; all his works are wonderful.