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PopsiLufsJesus -> How's Your Patience? (9/2/2008 5:38:49 PM)
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I'm not a very patient person. Recently, I've been trying to get answers from God and because of the lack thereof of responses I began to get angry. You and I know that getting angry gets you know where fast. My best friend kept telling me, "there is beauty in the waiting." And of course being upset I just rolled my eyes and had to believe she was wrong knowing all along that she was ABSOLUTELY right.
I woke up around ten this morning. Went outside to enjoy the outdoors for a while. Sometimes I like to just sit there and think in the morning. This morning there were two lovely, yellow butterflies flying around and they reminded me of one of the stories that the Pastor had told us at church recently. Not only that, but they also taught me something about myself.
At the beginning of this summer I tried and tried to catch a butterfly. Whenever I was outside and I saw one of them I was after it like it was nobodies business and nobody should get in my way. I will even admit that I prayed that I would be able to catch a butterfly. I would pray for it over and over again and it didn't happen. My prayer and my tries seemed unfruitful. All of this effort to catch a butterfly and it wasn't happening so I stopped trying. Sometime shortly after I had stopped trying my friend and I were sitting on the porch talking and then a butterfly came and landed on my lap. It was so satisfying! I was more than HAPPY.
In that situation I had to wait, but when what I wanted happened and I didn't even have to catch it--it was PERFECT!
Let me tell you the story my Pastor told us about butterflies. He said that one time he snipped the end of a butterfly cocoon and the butterfly came out, but that the butterflies wing was deformed. It was deformed because it was not yet ready to come out of the cocoon. That there was beauty in the struggle, in the waiting, that went on while the butterfly was in the cocoon and that ending the struggle too soon caused the deformation. If he had left the butterfly it would have been able to come out on it's own and it would have been beautiful, perfect, and ready to spread it's wings and fly.
I'm learning that there is purpose in the process. That waiting although frustrating sometimes, especially when I am struggling, brings growth in me and maybe not even growth that I recognize right away, but it does happen. Sometimes I have to wait in my struggle and sometimes I have to wait when I am not struggling.
The butterfly was pleasing to my eyes and many things are pleasing to my eyes. There are many things I want in Christ, but until I am ready for them. Until, like that butterfly, I've gone through the waiting process, it is probably better that I not have them because then like that butterfly who was deformed; there would be some deformity. There is PERFECTION in patience.
James 1:2-4
"My Brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."
What does your patience look like?
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