One day a small opening appeared on a cocoon, a man sat and watched the butterfly for
several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little opening.
Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had got 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, shrivelled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened.
In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of it's life crawling around with a swollen body and
shrivelled 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 opening, were God's way of forcing the fluid from the body of the butterfly into
it's wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved it's freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through
our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could
have been. We could never fly.
