An interesting system has been used for capturing monkeys in the jungles
of Africa. The goal is to take the monkeys alive and unharmed for shipment to zoos of
America. In an extremely humane way, the captors use heavy bottles, with long narrow
necks, into which they deposit a handful of sweet-smelling nuts. The bottles are dropped
on the jungle floor, and the captors return the next morning to find a monkey trapped next
to each bottle.
How is it accomplished? The monkey, attracted by the aromatic scent of the nuts, comes to
investigate the bottle, the nuts, and is trapped. The monkey can't take its hand out of
the bottle as long it's holding the nuts, but it is unwilling to open its hand and let
them go. The bottle is too heavy to carry away, so the monkey is trapped.
We may smile at the foolish monkeys, but how often we hold to our problems so tenaciously
as the monkeys hold to the nuts in the bottle. And so, figuratively we carry our bottle
around with us, feeling very sorry for ourselves, and begging for sympathy from others,
even from God.
