Are you a butterfly, yet?
God doesn’t love us because we are good, God loves us because He is good!
He created every one of us to spread our wings and fly!
Being good, doing the right thing, treating others the way we want to be treated are part of our moral compasses. That is a good start, but it is incomplete. To live a more fulfilled life, to find peace, joy and love we must know who God is. We need to know his incomprehensible character, His infinite power, His unconditional love. When we learn that part of our story, we then know of his goodness. Until we discover the truth that He is Love and allow that truth to override what the world has presented to us, all kinds of ideas that the Almighty is one who rules from a place of authority with a gavel in hand, we cannot visualize our ability to fly. When we learn that He is more about relationship than condemnation, that’s when life gets real.
That’s when we the light enters, and we begin to see a glimpse of our true potential.
A caterpillar is good. It always does good. It is incapable of anything less. When a caterpillar completes its season of crawling on its belly, a cocoon is created. The caterpillar just does what it is able to do. It eats and rests, within a protective dark place. When the caterpillar submits to the Creator (because this creature has no free will, they really aren’t given the choice but for the sake of this metaphor please give me creative liberty), when it knows Him and accepts its calling, God powerfully moves in and does the transformative work to help the caterpillar manifest into its true purpose. If the caterpillar settles for just being good, it could remain in the cocoon and never know that it was meant to break out of the place of protection and discover that it is a beautiful creation with the ability to fly!
What should happen when we are getting to know God in our cocoon, our safe place?
We get to let go of unproductive worry.
We get to ease our relentless responsibilities.
We get to let go of the unnecessary burdens we were never meant to carry.
That letting go allows love, joy and peace that we knew as a child to return to our souls because most of us have accumulated messy distractions that have taken up too much room in our thoughts. When we remove the strongholds that keep us from knowing God, we then have the ability to pursue a true personal relationship with our Abba Father.
His son Jesus shows us the way. The Holy Spirit assists us in the journey.
We are never alone! Team Trinity walks with us every step of the way. But we must invite them. They won’t force us. Unlike the caterpillar we are truly free to decide.
Could the tremendous psychological damage that have impacted our lives since the World Wars have created a worldwide belief that being good is good enough? Stalin and Hitler and others, who ruled with such hatred in their hearts, ignited a widespread impact of evil, spreading violently the lies of division throughout the world, leaving tsunamis of destruction and fear. God’s people continue to feel in the aftermath.
Did Covid act as a catalyst to change? Was Covid a cocoon moment? Did Covid open our eyes to the fact that being good isn’t enough? If so then what can we do?
We should still do good.
We should yearn to learn more about the person who demonstrated the greatest and perfect example of goodness, Jesus.
We should recognize that Jesus set an impossible goal for humans. One that we can never reach on our own power. That reality opens the door to freedom. Freedom to do the best we can and believe that that is enough. We must believe the promises of God are true or we cannot arrive at a place of personal contentment with our own efforts. We need God to do the hard work. We need Him to strengthen us enough to press out of the cocoon, to break out of the safe place, to take a chance and trust what He has planned for us when we break out of the bondage and stretch our wings to fly.
We must trust in the goodness of God, that our best is good enough.
Let’s begin by getting ourselves stronger in the belief of how good our God really is. Let’s increase our knowing that our best is all we have, and it is good enough. We need cocoon time.
Does anyone wake up and say, I’m only going to give 50% today. No. We do our best, even when the grief feels so heavy that it keeps us in bed all day, even when the physical pain is unbearable and makes us defensive and argumentative, even when we can’t define why we are filled with anxiety. Somedays staying alive is doing our best.
God sees.
God knows.
He never wants anyone to even think that staying alive is no longer worth the effort.
Too many of God’s children are quitting life while in the cocoon. That decision leaves a devastating wound to the ones who love them. When one sits invisible, isolated in the cocoon, it may be too late for any light from creatures, to enter. If we increase the knowing, of the light to the caterpillar before they enter the dark place, that can help the creature to find the courage and strength to continue on the path of goodness, even when it is scared, even when it feels unseen, even when it feels weak.
When we personally feel stronger, when our wings begin to dry out, then we can ask move forward in this question:
How can we do better at loving the ones God gave us to do life with, to help them when they enter their own darkness, to press on and push into the light? How can we access our butterfly beauty to encourage them that the fight is worth it? Look to the Light.
We can only do our best. God can do the rest!