Faith in Parenting

My daughter’s preschool class is doing a unit on butterflies, so there’s a butterfly kit hanging in the room with twenty chrysalises in mid-transformation. Madelyn couldn’t wait to show it to me! She took my hand and led me right over to the display. And as we got closer, I couldn’t help but notice that they look kind of, well, gross! I mean, they look a little bumpy and furry and sticky. (I bet they smell, too, although I really didn’t get that close.)

And so I told Madelyn what I thought - that they were awesome, and also kind of gross-looking.

“Isn’t it neat that God can take something that looks kind of gross and turn it into something so beautiful?!!”

She just laughed and went on her merry way, picking out the clothespin to match the station she wanted to go to first.

But as I drove home, I kept thinking about those butterflies, and how they relate to us as human beings. Do you have anything icky and gross hanging around in your life? Something bumpy, furry, and maybe a little sticky? What’s God preparing to do with that?  Can we even imagine?

Lord, we’ve all got places in our lives that look a little dead or gross or ugly, and we want to give them over to you. You are the giver of all life, and you can transform our unsightly bumps into creations more beautiful than butterflies. So we just hand them over to you now, Lord, and wait with expectation and faith, to see what you’re going to do. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 3:55 pm and is filed under prayer, faith, children. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.