I know all of you thought I mistyped and meant to say out of the darkness and into the light. But I didn’t. I want to talk with you about being in darkness and going into light. 
I was thinking the other day about how life changes and changes us. You know, you are just going along and life is just happening one day after another and then BAM!!!! Things change and these things seem to be beyond your control. This brought me to the caterpillar.
I was telling Jesus how much I wish I could speak with a caterpillar while they were in the cocoon stage. Just imagine with me for a moment. Your are following your instinct (for us our understanding of God’s direction) and are climbing up a tree and out onto a limb. Nothing too difficult about that. But suddenly you feel like you can’t move forward. You’re stuck (I can relate, can you?) You pull, you push, but you don’t move. Wonder if that caterpillar ever wonders what he was doing wrong. All the movements he has used before aren’t working. He’s not going anywhere. Then things begin to close in on him. They close so tightly that if he ever had any hope of moving along the branch those hopes are gone now. He is confined, alone, and in the dark. I often have wondered if God made the cocoon so small and tight because he wanted to help the caterpillar not fight to be freed from something God knew was working for his good. I know at times I have felt surrounding by something I could not get free from. When those times have happened I had lots of questions for Jesus. Makes me wonder if the caterpillar does.
But since he cannot free himself from the cocoon, he rests in the cocoon. Like all of God’s creations (except for man) he trusts that what he cannot understand is fully known by God. He is actually saving his strength for a future date. A day when God HIMSELF opens the end of the cocoon and tells the creature it is time to exit. You would think after obediently waiting for God’s timing that the exit would be easy. But have you ever known anything of great value that was easily obtained?
I often picture the first piece of this new body beginning to emerge. Wonder if he glances down and says, “Oh my something has really changed while I waited on God. What are these multicolor things to my side? Why do I have this sudden urge to reach the sky?” Then by following instinct (just as before) he spreads these new things on the side of his body. Lo and behold!!!! He feels himself mounting into the air and riding on the breath of God for the first time in his life. The view was surely very different from this angle than on the tree branch. He thought the tree branch gave a great high view of things. But this was much, much, better.
I can only imagine how grateful that little fellow was that he had patiently waited for God to finish the work. To understand if he had gotten ahead of God he would have destroyed what God had planned.
I have so often been a caterpillar. Lying quietly in full trust in a dark, tight cocoon is never easy. But as I wait, I learn. As I learn I increase my faith. As my faith increases I realize afresh that in Christ I can do anything.
The view is so much better from up here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hope to see you in a Tea Room soon,
Elizabeth