The trial and the taste

 

Isn’t it a typical human reaction to question God when we face rough weather or when it gets incredibly tough to confront certain situations in life? Do we not fret and fume and wonder when something we think we badly need is denied to us? Don’t we at times even accuse God for all the denials that we think we deserve? 

Well, if only we constantly reminded ourselves that He decides each and every situation for us based on what we really need and deserve. For, God can only do good to us. He is our creator and only wishes to see smiles on our faces, even though it may not always seem that way. And this is because, unfortunately, our vision is often narrow. All we need to do is believe that everything that happens is for our best, and that there could be no other way to progress in life. 

Here is a beautiful story. Jimmy found a cocoon of a butterfly in his back garden one evening. He decided to take it indoors to watch it break through its shell and arrive in this world safe and sound. 

After a few days, he saw that the cocoon cracked at a point through which he could see the butterfly struggle to get out. Feeling pity for the butterfly, and assuming that the fighting creature needed his help, he enlarged the hole through which he could see the butterfly trying to break free. The scissors did the job alright, and Jimmy was excited in anticipation of watching the caterpillar turn into a butterfly. But he noticed that the butterfly seemed to have an unusually oversized body with wings that looked weak, feeble, and shrivelled. 

Isn’t it the normal way for a caterpillar to transform into a butterfly once out of the cocoon? Did Jimmy even doubt that things would go wrong? Well, while Jimmy waited and watched to see the caterpillar grow into a beautiful butterfly, the caterpillar really never grew anymore. He was hoping that the butterfly would spread its wings that would eventually get large enough to pick its body up for its first flight. Unfortunately, such a thing never happened. The body of the butterfly remained strangely large, and it stayed there, crippled, with shrivelled wings. 

Jimmy’s heart broke when he realized that in his concern and impatience to get the caterpillar to be a butterfly, he had actually deprived it of a normal life. The apparent struggle of the butterfly that Jimmy had witnessed was the time required by it to gain enough strength in its wings to fly out of its shell. The struggle to break the cocoon was very much necessary for its wings to become strong. 

That one moment of ill-timed intervention had crippled the life of the caterpillar forever. It could never become what it came into the world to be – a butterfly. 

Therefore, all that we go through in our lives is for our good, whether we realise it at that point or not. We must trust Him and accept everything, pleasant and sad, that happens in our lives as His gifts. There is no other better way to lead a happy, contended and fulfilling life. 

Swami says, “Tests are the taste of God. The most precious ornaments arise from the fiercest of fires… A spiritual aspirant is one who undergoes all suffering smilingly.” 

~~ Heart2Heart Team~~