Lesson from a Butterfly

We recently saw an article by Julie Marcussen that brings a great lesson to us concerning the life struggles we all have. This lesson from a butterfly has to do with God’s design in living things. Also, it says something we all need to consider. The story goes like this:

A man found the cocoon of a butterfly and watched it hoping to see a beautiful butterfly come from the cocoon. One day a small opening appeared in the cocoon. He watched the butterfly try to force its body through that small opening, but its progress was painfully slow, and it finally seemed to stop and not make any more progress. It appeared that the butterfly had gotten 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 allowing the butterfly to emerge. But when it came out of the cocoon, the butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly expecting that at any moment, the wings would expand to support the body, which would contract.

It never happened. The butterfly spent the rest of its short life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings, unable to fly. The man, in his kindness, didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle for the butterfly to get through the small opening were a designed system to force the fluid from the body into its wings. Only then could it be ready for flight once it was free of the cocoon. That is the lesson from a butterfly.

Sometimes we need life’s struggles to prepare us to deal with the world in which we live. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it could cripple us. Expecting God to remove every problem, temptation, and consequence of bad choices would not allow us to be strong enough to have any value or purpose in our lives. We, too, would never fly.

This life and its struggles mold and prepare us for an existence with God free of problems and struggles. We can learn this lesson from a butterfly. Having struggled through the small opening of our existence we call “life” will make our heavenly existence just that more beautiful.

— John N. Clayton © 2021