~Please Allow the Words of This Song to Encourage You~
Labels are difficult to avoid. Most of us when asked to tell someone who we are respond with our vocation. I am a plumber, homemaker, minister, police officer or whatever. We do that to keep from telling people who we feel we are. I am a failure, a loser, an addict, divorced, lonely, depressed, incapable or some other label we have chosen to describe our inner hurts. Often those labels have come from a parent or other authority figure and we believed them and they stuck. 
I was recently listening to a message by Joel Osteen where he spoke of "wormy" thinking. The concept grabbed me and it made sense. Over our lives we have been told who and what we are. During that same time those labels built a cocoon around us and trapped us inside. We struggle inside that cocoon and we reinforce the walls with wormy thinking. We have accepted that we are a worm and the idea of breaking free is just a distant and unattainable dream. Just as that beautiful butterfly was never meant to stay in its cocoon - neither are you!
Sometimes we forget that we are beloved by God; the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. We were created in His image. From passages like John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world that he he gave his only
begotten son That whosoever believe on him shall not perish but have everlasting life."
To Jeremiah 1:5
"Before I formed you in the womb
I knew you,
and before you were born
I consecrated you..."
There are times when the struggles and stresses of our life are so overwhelming we long to crawl back into our cocoon and wallow in self-pity. We forget the grace of God. I would like to remind you today that you are loved and that God does not look at where you have been -- He sees what you can become. I hope in some small way God can use these words to remind you that you are valuable and loved.
Peace
~Al
