When you envision someone with tremendous strength, what do you picture?
Some might see a gladiator, huge with muscles, armed with weaponry and scarred from battle. This gladiator didn’t get to be so powerful overnight.
He achieved his warrior body through hard work; he became skilled with weaponry through vigorous training, and he earned those scars through intense suffering.
In this passage from Works By Faith, we discover what it takes to build strength.
Read the following story below.
One day as a small opening appeared on a cocoon, a man sat for several hours watching the butterfly struggle to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress.
It appeared as if it had got as far as 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.
He thought that 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 wing. It never was able to fly.
What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricted cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings. Then the butterfly would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If we were allowed to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could be. We could never fly.
For those with a kind heart, it’s hard to watch another struggle. Your whole body urges you to save that suffering creature.
But what we often fail to realize is that suffering is part of the journey towards well-being. Overcoming struggle requires strength, and by removing that fight; you’re in fact enabling another to remain weak and helpless.
Give them time to grow wings of their own, and they will soar the skies.
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