Don’t Give Up!

“I will put my laws in their minds and I will write them upon their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people.” Hebrews 8:10

St. Paul quoted from the 31st chapter of Jeremiah, where God spoke to Israel, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” The love described here is God’s love for every believer. “You must go back beyond your birth, beyond Calvary and Bethlehem, beyond the fall of man and the Garden of Eden, and as you stand looking out into the immensity of eternity, dare to believe that you were loved and chosen in Christ, the object of God’s most tender solicitude and pity.” (F.B. Meyer)

Perhaps we may say, as souls have asked throughout the ages, “If God loves me so much, why am I going through all this hardship and suffering? Why am I experiencing so much pain?” We may have heard perhaps of the story of the little boy and the cocoon he found and brought home with him. As he watched for hours, the butterfly struggled to get out of the cocoon, and then become still, then move again, and the boy decided to help. He took a pair of sharp scissors to snip carefully at the opening. The butterfly finally broke free but it could not fly. It’s wings were weak and shriveled and its body was swollen. The boy waited and waited in the hopes the wings would get stronger but it never did. When he asked his teacher, he learned that the butterfly was supposed to struggle as it emerged from the cocoon. Through the straining, the fluid from his swollen body would be pushed into its wings and the butterfly would be able to fly. 

Just like the butterfly, our struggles help build our spiritual wings. It makes us stronger. Robert Tew once wrote, “The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow. Don’t give up.”