Wired Word Lesson of the Week
Topic for Sunday, June 21, 2026:
Farmers, Scientists Seek to Learn From Nature: We will look at the news about how people learn to care for creation and address the challenges they face due to changing weather patterns and human decisions to explore how we can learn to be good stewards of our earthly home.
In the News
Individuals are encouraged to read the news below related to this topic before the June 21st bible study to be prepared for an engaging conversation:
Park Gyeong-je, 65, has been keeping bees in South Korea for nearly five decades. Over the years, as climate change has led to rising temperatures, strong winds and shorter seasons, he has faced new challenges. He used to make four trips across the country every year with over 100 hives that are home to about 8.8 million bees, chasing the black locust nectar his bees need, but now he only makes two such trips annually.
"In the past there were big climate differences between southern and central regions, so it was very good for producing honey. But now, because of global warming, flowers seem to bloom all at once nationwide," Park said. "Compared to the 1990s or early 2000s, the honey harvest has decreased by about 70%. In the past ... we harvested 8 to 9 times. Now we can only do so 4 to 5 times."
The honey harvest decline correlates with the loss of about 70% of acreage available for bees to forage in South Korea in roughly the same time period, according to data from the National Institute of Forest Science. More than a third of the beekeeping farms ceased operation between 2005 and 2025.
Honeybees pollinate the majority of our crops and trees that supply oxygen, food, animal habitats and other resources necessary for survival. According to some estimates, without bees we could lose one-third of the food we eat.
On the other side of the world, 62-year-old Geraldo Gomes, an organic farmer and seed guardian in the semi-arid region of Caatinga, Brazil, saves more than 200 varieties of heirloom seeds, including more than 70 types of beans, many varieties of corn, and seeds of medicinal plants, in his seed house.
"We have species of seeds that have been planted for more than 100 years. We keep them to show the importance they have had, and the importance they may have for future generations," Gomes explains.
For three generations, the family has bucked the trend of nearby livestock and cotton monoculture farms which employ pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Gomes says these factors, along with climate change, have contributed to economic hardship for many local farmers and the loss of many native plants.
The Gomes farm is home to a diverse array of crops. His grandfather always maintained that "a field should be like the forest, it has to have many types of plants."
"If you do not have a lot of patience and love for the seeds, you end up giving up," Gomes says about his devotion to seed preservation. "There are few incentives and few people who are interested in this work. [But] I look at the benefits you can gain from what you plant. It is a guarantee in the face of these difficulties ... We saved them so we would not be dependent."
Meanwhile, the U.S. federal government is dismantling more than 900 sophisticated deep-sea instruments off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts that have monitored oceanic currents and surface and underwater conditions 24/7 for the past decade. In 2025, the Trump administration indicated it planned to cut the budget for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), which was originally meant to operate for 25-30 years, by 80%. The National Science Foundation spokesperson Mike England said the agency remains committed to ocean science.
The loss of the OOI instruments removes data about wave height and frequency, water temperature and chemistry, shifts in circulation, and seismic activity on which fisheries, meteorologists and other scientists rely for accurate weather predictions and insight into the pace of climate change and the health of marine ecosystems.
"Ocean observing systems ... are like our eyes and ears in the water," says Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at Georgetown University.
"If you are driving your car and you're relying on signs to direct you to where you want to go, it's like taking out every other highway sign. So, you can imagine you're going to miss some key information," said University of Washington oceanographer Jan Newton.
More on this story can be found at these links: