The Catepillar

Presented by my good friend, Bill Hodi -

The Life of a Catepillar
A catepillar usually starts on one tree or bush and just pretty much eats what is around him, not going too far. Maybe another bush close by.  As he eats, his body starts to go into a metamorphis and starts to create a cacoon, in which he cacoons himself in.  While in the cacoon, a transformation takes place in his body, his appearance and nature.  

Once the transformation is almost done, he then struggles to get out of the cacoon to be set free.  If you help him out and cut the cacoon so that he can get out, the butterfly will not be totally formed and will have small wings and a fat body.  He will not be able to fly and will still be hanging out with the other catepillars.  But when you let it struggle out of the cacoon, that struggle is forcing the fluid from its body into his wings, thus allowing him to fly when he gets out of the cacoon.  When he gets out, he will then fly off the branch and cross pollinate with other flowers, plants, trees, etc.  His territory has just been expanded to a much larger area and will take the nectar and pollen from one plant/flower, to another.  

The moral of the story is that we are like the catepillar when we are baby christians.  We eat what is near us and don't wonder off too far.  As we start growing, God will start to develop and mold us into a beautiful butterfly.  But, in order to become this beautiful butterfly, we must go through the cacoon phase, which is allowing God to change us and mold into His image.  When we go through the struggles in life, God is building His character in us, thus creating something more beautiful than we started out looking.  We can then take what we learned and developed to other people, (cross-pollination), and help them go through their cacoon phase.  But if God stepped in and pulled us out of the cacoon too early, we would not become the butterfly that He wanted to create.  We will be deformed, and not fully functional to do God's perfect plan in our lives.