I have heard about this type of story at least a couple of different ways. I would like to share one of them.

Monkey trappers in North Africa have a clever method of catching their prey. A number of gourds are filled with nuts and firmly fastened to a branch of a tree. Each gourd has a hole just large enough for the unwary monkey to stick his forepaw into it. When the hungry animal discovers the nuts, it quickly grasps a handful, but the hole in the gourd is too small for him to withdraw his clenched fist. All the monkey has to do is open up its hand and let go in order to escape, but it refuses! So, it is easily taken captive. (Got this version of the story from my cousin and brother David Sargent)

Aren’t we just like the monkeys? We grab and won’t let go. We hold on even if it kills us. We see the prize and don’t think about the consequences. The next thing we know is that we wake up in jail, or with an addiction, or losing our family, friends or even ourselves.

Only by the Spirit of God can we overcome. Only by being receptive to the Spirit will we have the power to let go. Pray. Be wise. Think before you hold on. Let go if you have hold of an ungodly thing. God will bless you.

Sid

Always Seeking

This is used by permission from its author David Sargent. He is my first cousin and writes a weekly article also. He preaches in Mobile, AL. He and his family are great servants of the kingdom.

Mel Ellis, an expert on wildlife and conservation, has written a little book of fables in which he examines the world around him with a naturalist's eye and celebrates what he sees with a poet's vision. The forty-sixth and last fable in the book unfolds in a little dialogue between the author and his daughter:
Daughter: “Now that I have read your fables I am disappointed because you gave no space to the ‘new morality.’”
Father: “Well, there are many, many things I did not touch on. As for morality, almost every generation claims a new morality. It is a vagary.” *
Daughter: “I'm not quite sure I understand.”
Father: “Consider the climbing vines. Honeysuckle, for instance, always twines clockwise, to its right. Jasmine always twines counterclockwise, to its left. Nothing can make either do otherwise. Yet there is one twining plant -- Scyphanthus Elegans -- which will start turning in one direction, making a couple of loops around its support, and then go back the other way, reversing itself every couple of loops or so.”
Daughter: “Well it would seem that is the most interesting way to climb.”
Father: “Most interesting, perhaps, but not a very tidy system.”
Daughter: “I still don't get the point.”
Father: “The point is that no matter how vines climb, whether to the left or to the right, or both ways, each is always seeking the same thing.”
Daughter: “And that is?”
Father: “Light.” **
Even so, no matter how each of us “climbs,” whether to the left or to the right, whether the corporate ladder or the social ladder, whether to economic heights or professional plateaus, we are all seeking the same thing: Light! That “Light” is God (1 John 1:5).
God “gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one, every nation
of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, SO THAT - they should SEEK THE LORD, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; ‘for IN HIM we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:25-27).

* “Vagary” -- an erratic, unpredictable, or extravagant manifestation, action, or notion (Webster’s Dictionary)
** Ellis, M., "Sermons In Stone," Holt, Rinehart and Winston (Adapted).