Monday, May 11, 2009

Chrysalis Christianity

I sit across from people and help identify their present: Right now, Who are you? Who is God? How are you living? Sometimes I see the incongruities between the answers to those three questions. Their faith penetrates the soil of their lives, often quite deeply, like roots - twisting, turning, burrowing, making room, fracturing the hard pan and clay. But so many (all) have rocks and even boulders where that faith does not seem to penetrate. Sometimes those boulders are so obvious, so incongruant, so much an obstacle that I feel this impatient need to pull out the jackhammer.

I know it hurts, SIT STILL! It's for your own good don't you know! 

For the record, God is not this way.

I was talking with a mentor the other day, and she confirmed that this festering impatience is in her too.  "But you can't squeeze a butterfly out of its chrysalis."  That's the picture I left with that day.

God lets wheat and tares grow up together. He explains, "because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest."

Clearly we are to tend the garden of our souls, but don't let impatience or guilt cloud the underlying truth.  We the elect are already planted as true good seed right down to the DNA, but not yet fulfilled. He is faithful to complete what he has started!

"I know he is faithful" they say, "in my head anyway..."

That is a great place to start.  Lets talk about what you know of His faithfulness!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

thanks for writing this. i'm with you on the jackhammer. and isn't it also so much easier to see other people's rocks, rather than our own?

i'm so glad that God has a gentler way with us than we do with others sometimes.