Caterpillars

I started a garden a few months ago.  I love to see a garden grow and God's beauty through it!  I love to see God make a cucumber grow and provide food for us.  This morning I went out to check on my garden and found some caterpillars on my plants, a struggle I've been battling the last few weeks.  I was excited as I found a cocoon on one of the leaves!  Why???  I'm a homeschool mom of 4.  I carefully picked it off and knew the kids were going to go crazy over it, which they did!  :-)  Then I continued my hunt to remove the caterpillars from my zucchini plant.  I kept finding more and more of these teeny tiny little green "worms" and happily plucking them off, adding them to the "science" pile.  After a few of my exciting finds, my excitement started to turn to frustration.  These caterpillars are the enemy; they are eating my plants, my food!  How dare they!  :-)  I continued pulling them off knowing that there was no way I could find all of them and they would lay more eggs and destroy more of my plants!  Arg!  Evil caterpillars!  Then I started thinking as I found 2 more cocoons...  What do these nuisances become?  Beautiful butterflies!  I am never annoyed by butterflies!   Butterflies are one of the most beautiful creatures and they stand for so many beautiful things.  Suddenly I was singing in my head, "He's still working on me!  To make me what I ought a be...." and I was thinking about how God transforms us as Christians from something ugly to something beautiful in His time.  I started thinking more about how so many people are in different "stages" in their Christian walk.  Some people have just accepted Christ as their Saviour and are still tiny little caterpillars.  Many days I feel like I'm still at this stage since I know I have so much to work on.  Some people have a lot of baggage in their lives and when they asked Jesus to be their Saviour, they had a lot that they slowly have to learn.  Sometimes these people can seem to be a "nuisance" because when they came to know Christ, they should have just suddenly known how to be just like Jesus!  I'm being facetious....  how many times do I expect someone to know what they should or shouldn't be doing?  Everyone is in a different "stage" in their walk.  A caterpillar doesn't just go from a tiny little egg to suddenly a big beautiful butterfly.  I need to gently love those around me and allow the Holy Spirit to show them or through me, show them, how to be more like Jesus.  I mean, really!  I have so much I need to work on myself!  In my mind, we don't ever fully become a butterfly until we go to be with Jesus.  So, in the meantime, aren't we all just caterpillars?  We are all sinners!  We all have done something wrong at some point in our lives.  God says we deserve to go to hell because we are sinners.  Heaven is perfect, so if He allows sin into Heaven, it's no longer perfect.  Jesus, God's Son and God Himself, lived a perfect life here on earth and then He sacrificed His life by dying on the cross and paying for our sins for us.  Then He rose again so we serve a living God who defeated death!  He paid it all for us!  If we accept Him as our payment, He now becomes our Saviour and God sees Jesus when He looks at us.  He washed our sins away and we are able to go to Heaven when we die.  So, as we are all "crawling" around here on earth, I need to remember to allow people grace where they are at and help them find the "nutrients" they need in God's Word and His truths.  Please Lord help me to see the butterflies you are making people into and love these little "caterpillars" around me even when they are sometimes annoying.  :-)