STRUGGLE THROUGH STRUGGLES
Proverbs
24:10 If you faint in the day of adversity,
your
strength is small.
You can easily determine the
caliber of a person by the amount of opposition it takes to discourage him.
A student found a cocoon one
day and brought it to his biology teacher. She put it in a glass box with a
warming lamp. About a week later, the students saw a small opening appear on
the cocoon. The cocoon began to shake. Suddenly, tiny antennae emerged,
followed by a head and tiny front feet. The students watched the progress of
the emerging insect throughout the day. By noon it had freed its listless wings,
the colors revealing it to be a monarch butterfly. It wiggled and shook, but as
hard as it tried, it could not seem to force its body through the small
opening. One student decided to snip off the end of the cocoon to help the
insect. Out it plopped to the table. Only the top half of it looked like a
butterfly. The bottom half was large and swollen. The insect crawled about,
dragging its listless wings, and a short time later, it died.
The next day, the biology
teacher explained that the butterfly’s struggle to get through the tiny opening
is necessary in order to force fluids from the swollen body into the wings so
they will be strong enough to fly. Without the struggle, the wings never could
develop.
Struggles cause numerous
things in our lives to develop. Like someone who exercises, it takes pain and
persistence for the body to develop muscles. Rather than struggle against
struggle, we need to learn to struggle through our struggles.
