Becoming

We are watching the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly in class. We started with 4 lowly yellow, black and white striped caterpillars in various sizes. Each were tiny, focused eating machines munching almost continuously on their only food source - milkweed. At the appointed time each moved to the top of the aquarium and onto the screen to turn into a chrysalis. This is an amazing process and one rarely seen because it is so fast. They attach themselves and then hang vertically until they shed their skin one last time in a writhing dance of change. We are waiting now for the final transformation and the becoming. It makes me think, as others have before me, about my/our transformation and becoming more Christlike...Christian.
Before we become Christians we, like the lowly caterpillar, move about close to the ground with a mighty focus on getting what we need to grow in whatever way we have decided is the best way to find and secure our personal happiness. When we have done all we can, when we finally feel the need for more, the inexplicable urge to change someway, somehow because we just aren't happy, then we stop.
When we hear the call of God in our lives, we like the caterpillar, attach ourselves and just hang on. I have seen every step of the life cycle with the Monarch except that letting go and hanging step. I wonder if they just let go with great abandon and fall straight or do they cautiously release 2 of their little feet at a time as they ease into the vertical hanging position. I want to witness this step, but it will have to wait for another year. And I wonder if we, when we find God and attach our lives to His, just let go with abandon, knowing that with him we are safe, or do we cautiously let go a little at a time? Our next step, like the butterfly, is to shed our old skin/life/way of living for the last time. When you watch the caterpillar do this, you see that it isn't really a gentle or gradual process. It is hard work, but it is also short work. After it is begun it must be completed and that final shaking off of the old skin is the very hardest part but when it drops you can see the relaxing into the new creature that is becoming. You can immediately see the creature it will be. I don't know if with us it is that obvious, that immediately, but I do know that it must be done if the transformation is to be complete. And once it is done...Woo Hoo! Who knew that inside that creepy crawly caterpillar was the beautiful butterfly? Who knows what is inside you? God does and He has built into us the "need" to be transformed ...completely and forever.
Amen.