The story of Two Frogs in Milk

“And whoever keeps his duty to God, God will appoint a way out for him.” (Qur’an 65:2)

There is a story of two frogs, one who was fat and the other who was skinny, who went on a journey to find food and decided to jump into a vat of milk. Unfortunately the bucket of milk had slippery sides so once the frogs jumped in they were unable to jump out. The fat frog told his friend, “There is no way we are going to get out of here! And nobody’s around to help us, we are doomed!” The skinny frog told his friend, “Just keep paddling, just keep paddling, don’t give up and we will get out of here. Somebody will get us, just keep paddling.” So the two frogs paddled for hours. After nobody came and nothing changed the fat frog told his friend again, “I am so tired my friend. Don’t you see nobody is going to get us. It is a Sunday and nobody is coming, we are doomed. We might as well give up and drown in peace.” The skinny frog replied to his friend, “Don’t lose hope, keep paddling. Somebody will get us, something will change, we will get out of here together.”

So the two frogs continued paddling for a few more hours. Then after nothing changed the fat frog told his friend, “Nothing is happening from all our effort and nobody is coming. I am done trying, I am going to stop paddling and drown because there’s no use in trying anymore.” And so the fat frog stopped paddling and as a result drowned in the vat of milk. Although the skinny frog was sad to see his friend give up he kept paddling and suddenly after another 10 minutes of paddling he felt something hard beneath his feet and he pressed against it and suddenly jumped out the vat of milk. It just so happened that all of that paddling had churned the milk into butter.

See a lot of times in our life we feel like we are in impossible situations unaware that walking through that situation is what makes us able to overcome it. Many of us may be stuck in a metaphorical vat of milk, seeing just a hopeless situation we can never get out of. But in those situations we must remember that we cannot sit back and dream the impossibility of something because it is walking through that something that changes the reality. Imagine if a caterpillar sat back and thought about how it could never fly, it would seem like an impossibility. But just like a caterpillar has to go through a cocoon to be given wings in order for it to be able to fly, it is through paddling through our personal “vats of milk” that we come to see that it is through God’s Grace and our striving that our circumstances begin to change