Never give up
Becoming a Christian (or re-becoming a Christian after un-becoming a Christian in my case) did not solve my problems. I wish it had!
I think we need to be careful we don’t tell people that becoming a Christian will fix things. That’s not what happens. It doesn’t make life easy and if we try to sell Jesus’ message as a promise for easy times we are lying.
We have all heard the story of the butterfly; if you help a butterfly out of its cocoon then the butterfly can’t fly, its wings are deformed. The butterfly needs the struggle of breaking through the cocoon in order to get its wings stretched and circulation going. In order to be healthy.
Maybe we are like that, we need struggles and challenges to stretch us, get our circulation going and in order to be healthy.
Second Corinthians chapter 4 verses16 to18 say that we shouldn’t lose heart, that although our physical self is suffering our inner self is growing, that this trouble we go through now is getting us ready for eternity and the things to come.
In my own life I have seen this play out several times, but it is never until long afterwards that I can truly be thankful and see any purpose in the struggles.
One thing that I can see the purpose in now is a lot of the health problems I have faced. Looking back I can see how coming through those times with my husband has strengthened us and made us appreciate each other more. [click to see article on Stuff]
But we have to get through the struggle in order to see the other side.
We need to continue struggling until we have passed through the trial and met the challenge. Sometimes the hardest part is just to keep going.
But if we stop struggling and give up, just accept it as normal then we stay in our cocoon. No longer caterpillars but not yet butterflies. Stuck in the in between.
I think we all know people who got stuck in between. The cocoon is too small, too tight and very uncomfortable. These poor people have often become bitter and its easy to see they stopped growing a while ago. They have adapted to living in hardship. The worst part is when they think that God wants them living in it, rather than moving THROUGH it. They are sad and kind of broken on the inside. They have no hope of anything different. They are stuck and think that God wants them stuck.
Let’s not be like that! Lets keep struggling, keep searching and refuse to accept the cocoon long term.
We were born to be butterflies.
KG
"This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." Winston Churchill —Harrow School, 29 October 1941.
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