The Man and the Butterfly
One day, a man found a cocoon of a butterfly with a small opening. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force it's 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 it could not go any further.
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.
Now the butterfly was free from the cocoon and didn't need to struggle any more. 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 it's life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled 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 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 since it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
MORAL: 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.
