Butterfly Takes a Struggle to Survive

Bruce Waltke, one of my mentors in my student days at Dallas Seminary, tells a marvelous story about the day that he and his daughter were walking in the forest. They came upon something you rarely see. It was an almost -born butterfly. The little cocoon was spinning and spinning and part of one fabulous wing was already out. This was right at the eye level of his daughter, so Waltke bent down and looked at the little cocoon at her level. She said, “Oh, Daddy, he’s just struggling to get out.” Bruce thought “Ill just help it.” And he said, “I reached down ever so carefully and gently and took the bottom of that cocoon and split it. And it all dropped in a blob and killed the butterfly.” He said, “I learned a lesson; they need the struggle of emergence to survive.” (Charles Swindoll).