Today as I was reading "Soul Cravings" by Ewrin McManus, entry 25 in the Destiny section, titled 'A Place of Hope' it spoke directly to my heart and seems to be one of the many themes (caterpillar to butterfly and trees/seasons) that GOD keeps using to speak to me.
So let me share some of what McManus wrote, it went something like this:
Probably the most famous metaphor to ever come from the early followers of Christ is the butterfly.... When you come to God and allow Him to re-create you, from that moment the old is past, and all things are made new. The word describing this is metamorphosis, the image of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly- same species, completely different. This describes a change that literally moves us from crawling to flying. It is a necessary change if we are going to journey to the future we were created to live, to experience, to enjoy.
Sometimes, we choose just to be a worm; at other times, our preference is to hide in the cocoon, but every now and again we choose to engage in the difficult struggle of breaking out. It's painful; it's frustrating; it's hard work. We might even wonder why God would make the cocoon so hard to escape from, never realizing it is the process itself that strengthens our wings and prepares us for flight....
All God wants to do is to take you where you cannot go alone and make you what you cannot be alone. You were not created to live your life absent of God. There is a dream for your life you can't even begin to imagine without God. Without Him you are settling for less.
If you were meant to fly, not even running really fast is that impressive.
You can spend your whole life trying to become what your soul longs for without God. You might resent Him that He's made it so hard for you to live out your dreams or fulfill your destiny. It's never quite hit you that it's in the struggle, in the process, even in the search for God, that He is making you strong enough to take flight. What in the world enters the mind of a cocooned caterpillar that would make it want to break out?
Maybe there's an instinct somewhere deep within it that lets it know something's happening, a change is taking place. It is no longer the same; it is somehow different....
Our ability to endure, to persevere, to overcome is fueled by this one seemingly innocuous ingredient called hope.
Everything that drives us,
every effort to succeed,
every attempt to be significant,
every moment we pursue a dream,
advance a cause,
or work to make the world better in any way
is an act of hope....
"Where There Is Hope, There Is Life." I agree.
I recently sent out and email that said I felt as though I had no hope left. I feel like I am the cocooned caterpillar, yet have a fear that I cannot break free. I have experienced being the butterfly and want to be there again. I feel trapped, sure I know that it is in the process of the struggle to break out where we get our strength, but I don't feel hope or as if I have the strength to make it out.
I feel like the ugly worm, trapped, scared,... not knowing or understanding what is going on right now. I don't like it and want to break free and fly. But...
Though I said I feel there is nothing to hope for, It is the one thing that I can not let go of. The hope that all the struggle was worth it, for there is, well has to be, something better to come.
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