I love this story because it has so many applications. It’s also about my favorite insect – the bee. Share it as you like and know it is given in
love. MW
The Parable of the Unwise Bee – James E. Talmage
Sometimes I find myself
under obligations of work requiring quiet and seclusion such as neither my
comfortable office nor the cozy study at home insures. My favorite retreat is
an upper room in the tower of a large building, well removed from the noise and
confusion of the city streets. The room is somewhat difficult of access and
relatively secure against human intrusion. Therein I have spent many peaceful
and busy hours with books and pen.
I am not always without
visitors, however, especially in summertime; for when I sit with windows open,
flying insects occasionally find entrance and share the place with me. These
self-invited guests are not unwelcome. Many a time I have laid down the pen
and, forgetful of my theme, have watched with interest the activities of these
winged visitants, with an afterthought that the time so spent had not been
wasted, for is it not true that even a butterfly, a beetle, or a bee may be a
bearer of lessons to the receptive student?
A wild bee from the
neighboring hills once flew into the room, and at intervals during an hour or
more I caught the pleasing hum of its flight. The little creature realized that
it was a prisoner, yet all its efforts to find the exit through the partly
opened casement failed. When ready to close up the room and leave, I threw the
window wide and tried at first to guide and then to drive the bee to liberty
and safety, knowing well that if left in the room it would die as other insects
there entrapped had perished in the dry atmosphere of the enclosure. The more I
tried to drive it out, the more determinedly did it oppose and resist my
efforts. Its erstwhile peaceful hum developed into an angry roar; its darting
flight became hostile and threatening.
Then it caught me off my
guard and stung my hand—the hand that would have guided it to freedom. At last
it alighted on a pendant attached to the ceiling, beyond my reach of help or
injury. The sharp pain of its unkind sting aroused in me rather pity than
anger. I knew the inevitable penalty of its mistaken opposition and defiance,
and I had to leave the creature to its fate. Three days later I returned to the
room and found the dried, lifeless body of the bee on the writing table. It had
paid for its stubbornness with its life.
To the bee’s
shortsightedness and selfish misunderstanding I was a foe, a persistent
persecutor, a mortal enemy bent on its destruction; while in truth I was its
friend, offering it ransom of the life it had put in forfeit through its own
error, striving to redeem it, in spite of itself, from the prison house of
death and restore it to the outer air of liberty.
Are we so much wiser
than the bee that no analogy lies between its unwise course and our lives? We
are prone to contend, sometimes with vehemence and anger, against the adversity
which after all may be the manifestation of superior wisdom and loving care,
directed against our temporary comfort for our permanent blessing. In the
tribulations and sufferings of mortality there is a divine ministry which only
the godless soul can wholly fail to discern. To many the loss of wealth has
been a boon, a providential means of leading or driving them from the confines
of selfish indulgence to the sunshine and the open, where boundless opportunity
waits on effort. Disappointment, sorrow, and affliction may be the expression
of an all-wise Father’s kindness.
Consider the lesson of
the unwise bee!
“Trust in the Lord with
all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways
acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Prov. 3:5–6).
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