HELEN SANDERS
12-3-2020
TRANSFORMATION
I was watching a large butterfly in our yard this week. It was almost as big as my hand. The color was beautiful as it flew freely from one plant to another. Yet, it did not start out as a butterfly. It was a worm or a caterpillar. I don’t find caterpillars as beautiful as butterflies, in fact they don’t look anything like a butterfly. Who but God would have been so creative?
Yet, in order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar has to go through drastic change. First of all, it finds a leaf that is safe to start the process. It starts to spin a cocoon around itself. It instinctively does this. It is part of its life cycle. It can stay in the cocoon from 5-21 days where it goes through metamorphosis, which brings it into something that it wasn’t before. It must go through the entire stage to emerge whole and be ready to fly.
In a sense God does this with us. In Psalm 22:6 there is a prophetic word about Messiah, Jesus Christ. It says, “But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” Sin is looked upon as being a worm. Jesus took the sin of mankind into his body, and then died on the cross. He was buried, which was like the worm being in a cocoon, and then He rose again and came forth from the grave in newness of life. His resurrection brought forth the hope of eternal life that each of us needs. In our sinful states we are just mere worms, but when we receive forgiveness of sin through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, we are transformed from something ugly into something beautiful. God works on his continuously to transform us from the inside out.
Even though we carry the body that we started with, one day we will shed it for a glorified body and be like that butterfly – free from the body of sin and death. What a glorious day that will be. In the meantime, we should never despise what God is doing in our lives. We are all in the transformation stage!
The next time you see a butterfly, let it remind you that you are being worked on by Almighty God. He has a plan for you, and it is good! Be blessed.
