A man found a cocoon of 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 that little hole.
Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had
gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further.
So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors
and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.
The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small,
shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, 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 shriveled wings. It never was
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 tiny opening were 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 lives. If God
allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would
cripple us..
We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly!