The Trail 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.
Bhagavan Baba says, “Tests are the taste of God. The most precious
ornaments
