Proverbs 6:6-8 in the Easy English Bible says, “Go to the ant, you lazy person. Watch what it does and become wise. It has no commander, no leader and no ruler. But it stores its food in the summer and it gathers its food at harvest time.”
Solomon could have pointed to a king. A general. A wealthy merchant. A great builder. Any number of impressive human examples of discipline and foresight and industrious living.
Instead he pointed to an ant.
An insect. Something most people step on without noticing. Something so small it barely registers as alive to the casual observer.
And he said go watch that. Sit with that. Let that tiny creature teach you something about how to live that apparently you have not yet figured out on your own.
That is either deeply humbling or deeply funny depending on where you are in life. Probably both.
But Solomon was not being cute. He was being surgical. Because the ant, in its smallness and its consistency and its complete absence of drama, demonstrates a set of principles that most human beings spend their entire lives struggling to embody.
The Most Striking Thing About the Ant
Before we get to what the ant does, notice what the ant does not have.
No commander. No leader. No ruler.
Nobody is telling the ant to show up. Nobody is checking whether the ant did its work today. Nobody is managing the ant’s schedule or holding the ant accountable or sending the ant a reminder notification that summer is not going to last forever and the harvest season is coming whether the ant is ready or not.
The ant just knows. And the ant just goes.
That is what Solomon wants you to see first. Not the work itself. The source of the work.
Internal motivation. Self-directed discipline. The kind of drive that does not require external pressure to activate because it is not coming from the outside in the first place. It is coming from something deeply embedded in the nature of the creature itself.
Most people are waiting for a commander. Waiting for someone to tell them it is time to start. Waiting for the deadline to get close enough to feel the pressure. Waiting for the circumstances to be right or the motivation to arrive or the accountability partner to check in.
The ant is not waiting for any of that.
It already knows what season it is. And it is already working.
Summer Will Not Last Forever
Here is the wisdom that sits at the heart of this passage.
The ant stores in summer because it understands winter is coming.
Not as a theory. Not as a distant possibility. As a certainty that shapes every decision made in the season of abundance. The ant does not consume everything available just because everything is available. It does not relax because the conditions are currently comfortable. It works precisely because the comfortable conditions will not last and what gets stored now is what sustains life when they don’t.
That is one of the most countercultural ideas in all of scripture.
Because the natural human response to a good season is to enjoy it fully and worry about the next season when it arrives. To spend freely when the money is coming in. To relax when the pressure is off. To coast when the momentum is good.
The ant does the opposite.
It works hardest in the good season. It prepares most urgently when preparation feels least urgent. It stores precisely when storing feels least necessary because it understands something that comfort tends to make humans forget.
Good seasons end.
And what you do during the good one determines how you survive the next hard one.
The Entrepreneur Who Never Learned This Lesson
There is a pattern that repeats itself constantly in business and it is essentially the story of a person who never watched the ant.
The business has a great month. Revenue spikes. The feeling of momentum arrives and it feels like this is finally it, the breakthrough is here, the hard early season is over and now everything is going to keep going in this direction.
And so they spend. Upgrade the lifestyle. Loosen the discipline. Take the foot off the pedal just slightly because things are finally working and surely that means they can afford to breathe a little.
And then the slow month comes. As it always does. As it always will.
And they are not prepared. Not financially. Not emotionally. Not operationally. Because they consumed the summer instead of storing it.
The ant would not have made that mistake. Not because the ant is smarter. Because the ant has a wisdom baked into its nature that humans have to consciously choose to adopt.
Prepare in the good season for the hard one that is always, always coming.
No Leader Required. Just Wisdom.
There is something deeply freeing about what Solomon is pointing to here.
The ant does not need a leader because the ant has internalized the principle deeply enough that the principle itself leads.
That is the goal for every person who wants to build something lasting. Not to find better accountability structures or more effective external motivation systems or a coach who will push you hard enough. Those things have their place. But the highest level of discipline is the kind that no longer requires an external source.
The kind where you show up because you understand what season it is and what the season requires. Where you store in summer not because someone told you to but because you have genuinely internalized the reality that winter is coming and what you build now is what sustains you then.
That kind of discipline is wisdom operating from the inside out.
And wisdom, as Solomon has told us elsewhere, begins with the fear of the Lord. With a proper understanding of who God is, how His world works, and what He has designed into the fabric of creation for the benefit of anyone willing to pay attention to it.
Even in something as small as an ant.
What Season Are You In Right Now
This is the question the passage is really asking.
Not in the abstract. Specifically. Right now in your business, your finances, your career, your relationships, your health.
Is this a summer or a winter?
If it is a summer, what are you doing with it? Are you storing or are you consuming? Are you building the reserves, the skills, the systems, the relationships that will sustain you when the season shifts? Or are you enjoying the abundance without preparing for the absence?
If it is a winter, what did your summer look like? And more importantly, what will you do differently when the summer returns?
Because it will return. Seasons always change. Summer follows winter just as reliably as winter follows summer. The question is never whether the good season is coming back. The question is whether you will be wiser with it when it does.
The Small Creature With the Large Lesson
God embedded wisdom into the smallest, most overlooked creature in the natural world and then told the wisest man who ever lived to write about it so that thousands of years later people like you and me would still be sitting with it.
That is not an accident. That is a God who wastes nothing and teaches everything.
The ant has no excuses. No circumstances to blame. No complex reasons why today was not the right day to work or why this particular season was too difficult to prepare in. It just reads the season correctly and responds accordingly.
Every single time.
Go to the ant. Watch what it does.
Then go build your summer stores before the winter comes looking for them.
Louie
What does your summer look like right now and are you storing or consuming? Be honest with yourself about that answer. It might be the most important question you sit with this week.
