TO "BEE" OR NOT TO "BEE"
By Sally Caldwell, Alaska, U.S.A.
A bee flew into the car one day while the family was stopped at a traffic light. Try as they might to get it out through an open window, it insisted on buzzing blindly into the windshield.When the family got home, they tried again to get it to leave, but this only made the bee buzz angrily against the rear window. Again and again, the family tried to direct the bee outside through the open windows and doors. Yet, each time it evaded them. Afraid of injuring the bee by trying any further, the family left the car with the windows openand parked it next to a flowering bougainvillea vine, hoping this would entice the bee to freedom. Alas, the next morning they found the little creature dead on the back dash under the rear window, mortally exhausted from its desperate efforts. This poor bee was so sure it had the answer to its dilemma and so it buzzed with greater and greater intensity into the window. It stubbornly maintained that it could solve its own problem, when the truth was that the bee's way got it nowhere. All the bee had to do to reach the flowers outside the car was admit personal powerlessness. At that point the family could have taken it gently from the midst of its prison and releasedit to the sweetness of freedom.And how often do we humans try to solve a problem on our own, trying harder and harder to overcome some perceived difficulty? It is rather sobering to realize that whatever predicament we are now facing, it was our bestthinking that got us there and it is our best thinking that is keeping us there, just like that little bee. Let go and let God.

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THE BUTTERFLY
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Author Unknown - submitted by Susan Gammage, Canada
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, and he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterflyspent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly. What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.