Are You Smarter Than A Bee

             The other morning, I noticed a bee in the window. I watched as the creature frantically flew back and forth trying to escape an invisible glass prison. It was either unaware it could escape the hot glass by flying off in another direction, or if it was attracted by some driving force creating a deadly allusion and making it think there was only one path for escape. As I sat and watched its futile efforts, I began to feel sorry for the creature. Even though I confess no love for bees, I decided to help it escape and I opened an adjoining door, then took my hand and tried to drive it towards the opening. It would briefly fly towards the open door, only to turn right back around and return to the window. After several attempts to help this bee, my patience grew thin and I got a little more aggressive trying to push him to freedom, only to have him turn on me and try to sting me.

As humans, we share common needs. We all need to feel loved and have purpose in our lives, we all need a sense of security. We share basic physical needs as well. When these needs aren’t met, it creates a dark hole in our lives, much like an insatiable itch that is difficult to scratch and impossible to ignore.

            Addiction is born from that itch. No one sets out to become a drunk, a pill-head, or (take your pick of vices}. People turn to the wrong things out of desperation attempting to satisfy that itch. This comes as no surprise as Satan has used this trick against mankind since the beginning of time and it continues to work like a charm still today. He allows these vices to pose as magic fixes just long enough for us to believe we have found a solution. But by the time, you realize these fixes didn’t work, their deadly side effects have taken over and compounded our problems. You now find yourself in it too deep and unable to discern the truth, and like the bee, can’t find a way out. The very things you sought a cure, now serve as locks on the gates of your prison. They separate you from God and all those who love and want to help you. In this confused state, you are prone to sting the very hands trying to help you. Like the bee, you try again and again to escape, only to be stopped mid-way by some unseeable force you can’t control and don’t understand.

God didn’t put you on this earth to be held prisoner or let anything or anyone rule over you. He gave you the great gift of power to choose your own destiny. But with any great power, comes great responsibility. When we make poor choices, there are consequences such as becoming slaves to addiction. Unlike the bee, we have a small voice inside our heads, telling us escape is possible, but too often we follow the other voice, which tells us it can’t be done.

The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. If you have exhausted everything you knew how to do, you’ve tried every cure you came across and nothing has worked for you. Maybe you’ve already been in one or more rehabs, don’t lose hope. There is help for you. Put away all your preconceptions, don’t listen to that evil whisperer inside your head, and stop listening to losers who only want to hold you back. Turn your life over to God! Mark 5:25-34, tells how he healed a woman with an issue of blood she had suffered for 12 years after all the doctors had failed to be able to help her.

If you truly surrender yourself to God, admitting to yourself and him that you are defeated, accepting the fact that there is nowhere else to turn, he will heal your addiction. Even if you think you’ve gone too far, or done things too horrible to be forgiven, he is only a prayer away. The Bible is full of accounts where God worked miracles for people. And stands ready willing and able to work a miracle for you as well. The question is, are you willing to accept it? Even if you are skeptical about things that happened back in Bible days, God hasn’t retired or quit. There are millions of people all over this world, who will happily testify what God has done in their lives and he will do it for you as well.

P.S. This story was written while sitting out front of one of the thousands of methadone pain clinics in the United States, as I waited for a family member to come out. I watched as what some call the dregs of society, came and went. And I asked myself are they truly a scourge on society or evil incarnate as some would have you believe? Or are they living souls who have experienced great pain and suffering in their lives, and while seeking a solution and redemption, have made bad choices and turned to false Gods? These souls are our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and husbands and wives. These souls are precious to God and therefore should matter to us. The Bible teaches us there is no such thing as big sins and little sins, and as for us, it also says our righteousness is that of filthy rags. If not but for the Grace of God, that could be you or your loved one standing there, and if addiction hasn’t touched your doorstep, consider yourself extremely blessed.

How then as a society, can we turn our backs and pretend they don’t exist or that they are someone else’s problem?  Where would we be if God had felt that way about us? I am not proposing we support their habits or condone their behavior. I’m simply saying instead of treating them as lepers, we try showing some compassion by offering them, the same love God showed us and letting them know, there is an escape.     Read Mathew 35-41