I have not been able to track down the original source of this. I wouldn't base a theology on these kinds illustrations, but they can be thought provoking.
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 it's 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.
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 struggling 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 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 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 what we could have been.
And we could never fly.
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Experience does keep a very dear school, but unfortunately, fools will learn in no other. Sometimes one wonders why it is faith that overcomes, and then one remembers that struggling and exercising are not always the same.
The tendency to struggle is parallel to the tendency of stubborn-ness, and to the process of 'learning as one goes'. Who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But if I have the mind of Christ, renewed in the image of Him that created me, then I can learn first, and then go exercise what I have learned through faith in the mind of Christ, then there is no more struggle. Resistance will always exist, but the time spent struggling to overcome is directly proportional to how long one strives according to his own abilities.
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