Greetings!
This Sunday we will examine the "sense of suffering," a question so often asked in life. Why does a good God allow good people to suffer? The following story illustrates a part of the answer, though I suspect we won't fully grasp it until the day we see Jesus face to face.
A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth and took it home so he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon.
One day a small opening appeared. The man sat and watched the moth for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. To the man it appeared as if the moth had gotten as far as it could in breaking out of the cocoon and was stuck.
Out of kindness the man decided to help the moth. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon so that the moth could get out. Soon the moth emerged, but it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the moth, expecting that in time the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would simultaneously contract to its proper size.
Neither happened. In fact, that little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.
The man in his kindness and haste didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body into the wings so that the moth would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Just as the moth could only achieve freedom and flight as a result of struggling, we often need to struggle to become all God intends for us to be. Sometimes we wish that God would remove our struggles and take away all the obstacles; but just as the man crippled the emperor moth, so we would be crippled if God did that for us. God doesn’t take away our problems and difficulties, but he promises to be with us in the midst of them and to use them to restore us, making us into better, stronger people. 1 Peter 5:10 (NIV) And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
