Skip to main content

Patience

             But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

 

            Before I left for Florida last fall, an Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterfly formed its chrysalis – and did not emerge. I left the enclosure in the garage over the winter. I was not surprised when it was still there at the end of March, and spring has been more cold than warm. I knew it wasn’t likely to emerge, but  recently I’ve been fretting a little about it. Why couldn’t it hurry up? Had it died? This morning when I opened the garage door to throw away some garbage, I looked at the chrysalis, and then I noticed something dark at the top of the enclosure.  At long last, there she was in all her chilly glory.

            I don’t know how long she’d been waiting, but I got her out and released her on salvia, then later moved her to some thyme (farther from the bird feeder.)  She’s in the sunlight and free at last. I decided to name her Patience because she and I waited all winter and most of the spring for her to emerge, then she had to wait until I noticed she was there before she could be free.

It's an old and often rehearsed picture of patience, I know, but I’ve lived it, so maybe the lesson will settle more deeply into my soul. The life of a butterfly is birth, frantic chewing, waiting (internal work), flight and reproduction, and death. We get to cycle among the middle parts of the process, and “frantic” doesn’t apply only to the time spent chewing. The problem is that – probably quite like the butterfly, we don’t see what we’re going through as temporary or part of a process. It's when we realize this that we can be patient.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more