A Butterfly


A man found a cocoon for a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared,
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 at any moment,
the wings would enlarge and expand
to be able to support the body,
which would contract in time.

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.
What the man in his kindness and haste
did not understand, was that the restricting
cocoon and the struggle required for the
butterfly to get through the smallopening
of the cocoon are 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 achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

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.
Not only that, we could never fly.