Every now and again something comes across my path that really impacts me, and when it includes anything in nature, that makes it even better!  I came across this short writing not long ago and I knew I needed to share it with you.  

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My dad has bees. Today I went to his house and he showed me all of the honey he had gotten from the hives. He took the lid off of a 5 gallon bucket full of honey and on top of the honey there were 3 little bees, struggling. They were covered in sticky honey and drowning. I asked him if we could help them and he said he was sure they wouldn’t survive. Casualties of honey collection I suppose.

I asked him again if we could at least get them out and kill them quickly, after all he was the one who taught me to put a suffering animal (or bug) out of its misery. He finally conceded and scooped the bees out of the bucket. He put them in an empty Chobani yogurt container and put the plastic container outside.

Because he had disrupted the hive with the earlier honey collection, there were bees flying all over outside.

We put the 3 little bees in the container on a bench and left them to their fate. My dad called me out a little while later to show me what was happening. These three little bees were surrounded by all of their sisters (all of the bees are females) and they were cleaning the sticky nearly dead bees, helping them to get all of the honey off of their bodies. We came back a short time later and there was only one little bee left in the container. She was still being tended to by her sisters.

When it was time for me to leave we checked one last time and all three of the bees had been cleaned off enough to fly away and the container was empty.

Those three little bees lived because they were surrounded by family and friends who would not give up on them, family and friends who refused to let them drown in their own stickiness and resolved to help until the last little bee could be set free.

Bee Sisters. Bee Peers. Bee Teammates.

We could all learn a thing or two from these bees.

Bee kind always.

~author unknown

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“For just as the body is one and has many members,
And all the members of the body, though many,
Are one body, so it is with Christ.
For the body does not consist of one member
But of many…that the members may have the same care for one another.
If one member suffers, all suffer together.
Now you are the body of Christ and individual members of it.
~~1 Corinthians 12:12, 14, 25-27~~

“A friend loves at all times,
And a brother is born for adversity.”
~~Proverbs 17:17~~

“A new commandment I give to you,
That you love one another;
Just as I have loved you,
You also are to love one another.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples,
If you have love for one another.”
~~John 13:34-35~~

“And this commandment we have from him:
Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
~~1 John 4:21~~