“They shall mount up with wings as eagles.” Isaiah 40:31

“The Lord God is my strength, and He will make my feet like deer’s feet.” Habakkuk 3:19

The magnificent devotional book, Streams In The Desert, edited by Mrs. Charles Cowman, long time missionary now with Jesus in Glory, contains a marvelous story about growing wings. Here is the story, in summary.

For nearly a year the large cocoon of the beautiful emperor moth had been kept for observation to watch the progress of metamorphosis turn the caterpillar into a lovely and fascinating winged creature. The cocoon had a narrow opening in the top through which the beautiful butterfly moth would emerge with it miraculous wings.

The person viewing the cocoon noted at long last movement of the creature inside. The moth was seek to emerge from the tiny opening at the top of the cocoon. It seemed to struggle for hours on end never to emerge. Finally the human observer thought himself to be more wise than the Creator and decided to lend a helping hand. “With the point of my scissors, I snipped the confining threads to make the exit just a little easier, and lo! Immediately and with perfect ease out crawled my moth dragging a huge swollen body and little shriveled wings. I saw miniature wings and longed to see these assume their due proportions and to appear in all its perfect beauty. But I looked in vain. My false tenderness had proven its ruin. It crawled painfully through the brief life which it should have spent flying through the air on rainbow wings.”

The wings of the butterfly moth were created in the struggle. Cutting short its struggle cut short the hope of growing wings. How true this is for the child of God. We do all we can to bypass God’s training and discipline, yet the struggle is what develops our eagles’ wings and our deer’s feet!

“We are not here to play, to dream, to drift.

There is hard work to do and loads to lift.

Shun not the struggle; face it! “Tis God’s gift.”

“But we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience (character) and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” (Romans 5:3-5)