This is part of an ongoing series during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. To engage further in the #QuarantineSoulCare series, click here.
A perfect new luna, sitting alone in the dark, will make you hold your breath. God made fancier moths but none more ethereal. Lunas are like sea glass or frost on the first two weeks of a garden. They are like Rivendell and powdered sugar. Their wing tails cross at the ends like lace-trimmed sock ankles on a tiny girl sitting still on Sunday morning. And when a new luna moves, she moves with the control of a ballet dancer at the barre.
Not too many weeks before, this same moth was a fat, crawling larva. Then, heavy with her own mass, she lumbered up some branch until she found a spot to attach herself and spin a cocoon. Inside that cocoon, every piece of her old body liquefied into a soup of her own proteins. While she waited, she was formless. … Does God whisper something like hope to all the wee little insects settling down into their own undoing? Do they know that they will soon come together again? Does metamorphosis feel normal as an itch on the end of your nose, or does it feel like the end of the world? …
Facing a situation that exposed the depth of his vulnerability, the apostle Paul said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.” But God didn’t take that situation away. Instead, God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
I’m sure that hearing no was tough for Paul. … But the no here was more important than a yes ever could have been. The shock of a refusal forced Paul to not only accept his inabilities but also to revel in them. A no is what finally gave Paul enough failure to say, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. … For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10, NIV). …
You don’t have to despair about the weaknesses pain is revealing. As you walk through this valley of the shadow of death, the Lord is with you. You were saved, and you are being saved still. Even this end of your world will be used by the Father who loves you. … For here in this holy place where you are most weak, you are most strong.
We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He’ll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him.
–Philippians 3:20-21, The Message
May today you experience the power of God being made perfect in your weakness. #quarantinesoulcare Click To Tweet
Today’s reading was taken from Courage, Dear Heart, by Rebecca Reynolds.
