I’m on a journey to discover more about hope. One of my favourite stories is about how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. When you get a chance just look online for a video of this incredible event which is known as metamorphosis. (you can find it here)
I can’t explain exactly what happens to the caterpillar, but there comes a time when the butterfly begins to emerge from the cocoon. And when you’re watching it’s an incredibly frustrating process. You really want to help the poor butterfly get out of this messy prison that it seems to be in. But the reality is that it needs to go through this incredibly complex and frustrating process, so that it it will emerge whole, as a beautiful butterfly.
In my journey to discover ideas about hope I came across this verse in the Bible that says this: I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hopethat the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
It seems that right now throughout the world, we’re becoming more aware of this idea that creation is in bondage to decay, the words that are used in the Bible. Whether it’s climate change, pandemics, bushfires, floods and drought, or wars and famines, there’s a lot of decay occurring all around us.
The person who wrote this passage that we now read in the Bible may have been writing a couple of thousand years ago, but he could have been seeing something that was going to happen well into the future. I get it, and I suspect you do, when we read the phrase, that creation was subject to frustration.
It’s like the process of metamorphosis. For that butterfly to emerge as a beautiful creature that flitters around from flower to flower, brightening up our day, it has to go through a time of frustration.
And maybe creation needs to go through a time of frustration as we prepare for something better. The Biblical writer referred to hope: He talked about creation being subjected to frustration, then added that this frustration occurred in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
So there’s hope, not just for us, but for the whole of creation. There’s hope because God’s got things under control. Just as I would like to reach down and help the butterfly out of its cocoon while its struggling to develop its wings and emerge in all its beauty, I suspect there are times God would like to step in and sort out the mess that we’ve made. And I’m sure many of us wish God would step in and sort out the mess.
But for our good, perhaps God is allowing his creation, including us, to go through a time of frustration, so that we can learn more about him, and that, in time, we can emerge, like a butterfly, from this time of frustration and decay, fully developed, brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Join me each week as I take you on the journey to hope. You can also hear these on 98.5 Sonshine fm.
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