In my office desk, at the very back, is my sermon in a box. It has preached me many messages, most of them about comfort zones.
One of the fun things we did as homeschoolers was raise silkworms. It was fascinating to watch them eat and grow, then spin themselves into amazingly compact cocoons. Then we waited…and waited…and waited until that morning when we saw the first moth fluttering around in our observation box. We waited some more until the second came out, but the third never emerged.
I’m sure we studied silk at that point, and that I explained about how the worms must be killed while still in the cocoon or the silk thread is destroyed. We unrolled the pieces of thread from one of the empty cocoons so our boys could see the silk and how it is supposed to be one long thread. The two remaining cocoons I kept, placing them in this box, because while I was teaching practical lessons, I was learning spiritual lessons.
As Christians, we live a spiritual cycle that is similar. We grow, we enter a new state, we rest, we transform, we emerge and step into the next phase of our walk with Him. In each stage of life, we have things to do, a purpose and plan laid out for us. Ideally, we move from one stage to the next naturally…but what if we don’t?
What about those times when we’re at rest inside our cocoons, in our comfort zones? We know what has to come before we can emerge – transformation. We have to set aside the old and take up the new. The problem is that the old is familiar, comfortable in its own way, and like the Israelites who were about to condemn themselves to 40 years in the wilderness, we see the required transformation and think it’s too much to ask of us.
That whole generation – the adults who decided not to move on with God – died in the desert, never becoming what God wanted them to be or having what God wanted them to have. Many Christians choose the same fate today by opting to stay in their comfort zones. Instead of accepting the transformation God offers, they stay right where they are until they die, be it a spiritual or physical death.
It’s sad to think that, inside the one, still perfect cocoon, there is a dead body, a life that should have been, a life that should have grown to reproduce, create more life. It is beyond painful to see the same happen in the life of a Christian because they will not take the risk, will not move out of their comfort zone so they can be transformed into a new creature that is prepared to do all God has designed them to do.
Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C