Slideshow image

I'm fascinated by butterflies, and not only the butterfly, but also the caterpiller and the process though which the transformation takes place. Last fall our Guatemala mission team took an afternoon trip to a nature preserve. This rainforest was home to all kinds of creatures and plants, waterfalls and suspension bridges (which was the literal end of the trail for some of our folks), and a butterfly conservatory. 

The conservatory included a dome filled with all kinds of plants and, well butterflies! They would fly around you, land on a shoulder or head, then flutter off to wherever there was a freshly cut orange. It was an awesome space to view these amazing and beautiful creatures. Just outside the dome was a separate space where the transformation process was happening, large plexiglass containers that held hundreds of chrysalides each categorized by the type of butterfly that would soon emerge. 

This transformative process is not unlike what we experience in our spiritual transformation. 

St. John said of this process, "Dear friends, now we are God’s children, and it hasn’t yet appeared what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we’ll see him as he is." 1 John 3:2, CEB. 

But how does it happen?

 

Intentionally.

Did you know that a caterpillar has a choice? It can continue living as it is with the risks associated with that (limited movement, seasonal changes, natural predators, limited food supply, etc.) or it can give itself to the mysterious process that will transform it into something entirely different. And it is likely that the caterpillar has no idea what it can/will become. It also doens't transform on its own. 

Marjorie Thompson, auther of  Soul Feast, a book on the Christian Spiritual Life said that "the caterpiller must yield up the life it knows and submit to the mystery of interior transformation. It emerges from the process transfigured, with wings that give it freedom to fly."

"I cannot transform myself," says Ruth Haley Barton in her book Sacred Rhythms. "What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place."

I know my life doesn't yet look like Jesus'. I still have a ways to go. But I will never get there unless I allow the Spirit to work on me, to put myself in the places and mindset where transformation can happen...every day. Daily rhythms and routines that put me in connection with Christ. And eventually, maybe sprout a couple of wings that allow me to fly. 

It's our choice. 

Let's be butterflies! 

Peace ><>

Pastor Chris