Awaiting Angels - Day 35
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone ~ John 12:24
Something They Couldn’t Be Without a Cocoon
An army of brightly colored butterflies rises unexpectedly, and Jesus pauses. He marvels at the rare sight in the wilderness and is reminded that each of these flying beauties once crawled. The sight reminds Him of home, laughter, and cheery songs. Metamorphosis begins with a willingness to become something more—something they couldn’t be without a cocoon, something beautiful. The wilderness was the God-man’s cocoon.
Heat, thirst, and weariness pressed Him into another vision. He saw Himself sailing out to sea with the view of the distant port becoming smaller until the port, like His expectations, dissolved, leaving the vast, heaving ocean filling His view. Lost in the endless circle of the horizon, His relation to the world vanished, but His sense of identity in the Father remained. The Father steadied Him. Jesus felt helpless but safe afloat on the ocean’s untamable expanse. The watery vision disappeared, and the sounds, scents, and sights of the desert engulfed Him once again, but He took heart knowing those things that once chained Him to the dust were now gone forever; “the old has passed away and, behold, the new has come.”
What comes next for us? We plan, calculate, do, and pray, but our lives stand on a pinpoint, begging the confidence of an untamed lion who purrs like a kitten. Yet this is the substance of hope: to look to something more because we can. We believe that in the hands of our Maker, our chains will fall away, and in the end, “we shall be like Him.”
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