The Butterfly Story

Life’s a Struggle, or Is It?

I am about to share with you a simple story that has changed by perspective towards life. There was a science teacher who was teaching a group of students science lesson. In this lesson, the teacher placed a fully developed cocoon of a butterfly on the table in the science lab. He then instructed the students to crowd around the table to watch as the cocoon was about to hatch into a butterfly. As everyone was watching eagerly, the teacher’s mobile phone rang and before he went outside to answer his phone, he told his students that if the cocoon were to hatch, not to help the butterfly come out of the cocoon. Let it come out naturally and with that, he went outside to answer his phone call.

The cocoon then started to hatch and as the butterfly was slowly making it’s way out, it seems to have paused halfway as if it was stuck and could not fully come out the cocoon. This point in time, one of the students by the name of John took pity on the butterfly and decided to break open the cocoon with his fingers and helped the butterfly out. One out on the table, as the butterfly tries to spread it’s wings, it slowly died. Everyone was so angry at John and felt so sad for the butterfly.

The teacher returned into lab and asked who had helped the butterfly out of the cocoon? John admitted that he was the one and that he was sorry that he had unintentionally caused the butterfly’s death. He informed that he was merely trying to help it come out faster. The teacher then told the class the process of the butterfly coming out of the cocoon itself may be slow and painful but it is essential to the butterfly survival. This is because as the butterfly struggles to come out of the cocoon itself, if is pumping blood into it’s wings and this in turn helps strengthen the wings so that the butterfly is able to fly after coming out of the cocoon. If we were to help t he butterfly to come out, it will eventually die as it does not have the strength to fly or survive. There’s an old saying “If we give a man a fish, we feed him for a day. If we teach him how to fish, we feed him for a lifetime.”

If you truly understand the meaning behind this story and reflect on your own life, you will find that we are in fact very similar to the butterfly struggling to come out of our own cocoon. Life is full of ups and downs but sometimes it is the downs that helps drive us on.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

I Corinthians 1:27