As the new year ramps up, I am finding it hard to let go of some 2025 dreams. And I’m wondering if it’s even in my best interests to hold onto them.
The internet doesn’t agree about whether the Burmese Monkey Trap is fact or fiction. But either way, it goes something like this: A hollowed-out coconut is chained to a stake, with some rice inside. On one side of the coconut is a small hole, sized so a monkey’s hand fits perfectly through that hole. But when the monkey reaches inside and grabs the rice, then tries to pull his hand back out of the coconut, his rounded fist prevents him from getting out of the trap.
He’s only caught because he won’t release his grip.
Monkeys will stay there, stuck, hanging onto that insignificant fistful of rice to their own detriment. As bystanders with a better perspective, we can see it—Is that tiny bit of rice really worth being trapped for?
It’s a funny mental image, but we’ve all been that monkey—wanting just a bit more for ourselves, something that is not ultimately in our best interests. Not realising that our only freedom lies in letting go of what we desperately want. And releasing ourselves into the ‘more’ God wants for our lives.
I’m wondering if what I want is preventing me from receiving God’s best in my life. After all, I couldn’t even know what to ask (grasp?) for, because as Scripture says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9 NLT). And in Ephesians 3:20, we read, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…” (Ephesians 3:20 NIV).
The Good News—literally—is this:
When we have the courage to stop holding on, He will hand us more than we can imagine.
Often we need to let go for our own welfare, even when we don’t understand or it makes no sense from our vantage point. And when we do, our good God has the rest covered.
After all, my friend says, “Sometimes God asks us to let go of our own vision, to step off a cliff, trusting He will catch us. And when we do, we just might find it was only a curb after all.” Or a handful of rice we were clinging to, as the story goes…
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