This past Sunday the Lenten message at church was about dealing with the struggles of life. Sort of how life only has meaning because of death, and how the hard parts are how we learn and grow and mature. In other words, we need the struggle!
My morning devotions from commonprayer.net the very next day then included this:
Sadhu Sundar Singh, an early twentieth-century Indian missionary, wrote, “A silkworm was struggling out of the cocoon and an ignorant man saw it battling as if in pain, so he went and helped it to get free, but very soon after it fluttered and died. The other silkworms that struggled out without help suffered, but they came out into full life and beauty, with wings made strong for flight by their battle for fresh existence.”
It seems I keep being reminded of my reactionary tendencies. It's often more difficult to watch someone struggle - and therefore learn and grow - than to try to jump in and "help."
Perhaps learning how to simply be there - without doing something - is how we learn and grow too.
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