Life's Struggles

Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared in it. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly.

He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that the wings would enlarge and the body would contract any moment. The wings would then support the body in flight. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.

The man in his kindness and haste did not understand the process. The butterfly needed some struggle to come out of the small opening of the cocoon. This was the God‘s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it became free. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through all our life without any obstacles, that would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been and without bad times, we could not appreciate the good times. Not only that, we could never fly.