butterfly

                                One day a man found a cocoon of a butterfly.

After watching it for a while 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 farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so 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 life. If God allowed us to go through
our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we
could have been.

                                                  And we could never fly