"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A man found a butterfly's cocoon. One day a small opening appeared. He
sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force
its body through a tiny opening on the cocoon. Then it seemed to stop
making any progress, appearing as if it had gotten as far as it could.
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. He
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. The butterfly
spent the next couple of minutes crawling around with a swollen body and
shriveled wings. It could never fly. What the man, in his kindness and
haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the
butterfly's struggle 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.
