metamorphosis.

I listened to a podcast tonight on trusting God, by Jerry Bridges.
He describes a moth breaking out of a cocoon as a metaphor for experiencing adversity:

A moth struggles, as it goes through the metamorphosis process,

to break free from the cocoon it has lived in for a time.

As someone watches, he decides to lift the moth

and cut open the cocoon so as to spare the creature from

the tiresome struggle of ripping through the fibrous enclosure.

He does not understand that this is a God-ordained struggle

with a purpose behind it. 

The moth emerges easily from the cocoon, 

free of the struggle, but doomed never to fly. 

You see, it's it's the struggle that allows the caterpillar to become a moth.

As the moth works toward breaking through the pouch it sits in,

it's body physiologically responds, allowing the correct enzymes 

to be produced & circulating, as well as the strength to be built to use its wings. 

It is impossible for that moth to fly apart from the struggle to break from the cocoon.

Today I am thankful for this: 

No struggle is purposeless.