God has created a world in which we experience time as past, present, and future. I cannot conceive of any other type of world, but I’m sure God can. For some reason, God seems interested in the progress of His creation. We learn from the past. We live in the present. And we anticipate the future.
I’ve been thinking recently about the way that God desires us to grow and I am increasingly confident that we do not give enough credit to the future that God promises for us. In the present we do not know what we will be. We often lack imagination in the present moment regarding the way that our decisions will affect our future.
It is astonishing how we can live for years in a cause and effect world, and still cease to learn the lessons. A diet of junk food produces health problems. Being rude and complaining to everyone around me will result in increased distance in relationships. Neglecting the spiritual disciplines of prayer, gathering together, and Scriptural intake will result in spiritual apathy and weakness.
Recently I have been having some deep conversations with people as a spiritual director in their lives. They have some looming tough choices ahead of them. And I have found the metaphor of the cocoon in mind frequently. I certainly don’t imagine that caterpillars feel much emotion over the process but, humanizing the metaphor, I imagine the unknown of the process to be terrifying. The caterpillar will be closed off, isolated in darkness, and alone for days on end. It must go through this dark and difficult time of transformation in order to get its wings.
I see a pattern of going through the hard things now for the blessings later. These are never logical steps. The caterpillar can stay on the leaves munching away. It doesn’t think about what it means to fly.
We don’t know the future. We don’t know what God desires to make of our lives next month or next year. But we know that for those who are His, He is working a good plan that results in us being more and more like His Son. It is possible that someone reading this is on the verge of some hard decisions. Maybe there is a hard step into battling sin and it isn’t going to be easy. Maybe it is a need for more discipline regarding time in His Word or prayer. Maybe it is apologizing and resetting an important relationship.
God uses hard seasons and tough things to cause us to grow into that which we never knew we could be. And so we ought to thank God for the past. Trust and obey in the present. And look to Him with anticipation for the future.
