Still He Waits

When I was younger I was really into butterflies. And not just the butterfly part, but the caterpillar part too. I would spend my sweaty hot summer days crawling under bushes to find one, a caterpillar that is, so I could stick it in a rather large jar, identify it, feed it the right type of food it needs to be fed, and watch it transform into a flying jewel. One day, in all my delight, I found one hanging out on a redbud. I was so excited that I took it in, fed it, and slowly watched as it made it's cocoon. It was then that I realized that I never identified it. So, I grabbed my handy "Butterfly & Moth Identification" book, flipped through the pages and realized my precious butterfly was going to be a beat-up, dirt brown moth! Deep inside I was disappointed. I wanted color! Size! Beauty! I watched as it continued to make it's cocoon. Even that was ugly! I had thoughts of just giving up on it, but I knew that wouldn't be the right thing to do- ugly or not. So, after that I waited. And waited. And waited. Soon it was three months and over-due to "hatch". "Come on you, stupid thing!" I remember thinking. "I'm sorry I insulted you, er, the thing you're soon to become, but please hurry up!". But it still did not hatch. A year passed, and the jar still sat on my desk, untouched. I was assuming it had died, but still didn't dispose of it. I had horror images flash through my mind of throwing it out, just before it was about to come! I still had hope, though. A maybe, in the back of my head.
Another year has passed now, and still, to this very moment as I type these words, it's jar is sitting in the same spot. A tad dusty, but all the same. And so I started thinking and it reminded me of God. Obviously God is not like me, in the sense of thinking we're ugly and almost giving up on us. But he does have patience and mercy for us. He doesn't throw us out, though on earth we might be dead inside. He keeps us tucked away in the palm of his hand, no matter what. And though we might turn out to be just moths while we're on earth, his love for us is everlasting. Still, he waits for us to transform.