“But
what about you?” (Jesus) asked.
“Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of
the living God.”
Matthew 16:15-16
It all begins with
conviction—your pupa or chrysalis stage that is. One day, like the caterpillar,
you quit munching on the ways of the world as you had been doing since birth. It
can happen in an instant, or settle in on you slowly.
It may have been an early
Bible story at your mother’s knee that got your attention, or an aha moment at
youth camp. Perhaps you felt an emptiness that no one person or thing could
fulfill. Maybe you had a really bad day and despair set in. Or someone just
popped into your life and told you the story of Jesus. Whatever it was, you caught
a glimpse of something bigger than yourself.
Consider the silkworm
caterpillar. It spins its pupa of one continuous white or yellow strand
averaging 1000 yards in length, the unlikely source of commercial silk
production in China. How amazing, to think that something so silky and
beautiful could come from an insect as ugly as a caterpillar.
And so, like the caterpillar
attaching itself to something solid and spinning itself into a silky protective
casing, you began the process of answering, for yourself, the question Jesus
posed to Simon Peter: “Who do you say I am?” It is as if God were
covering your sinful self with His silky presence.
Inside the pupa strange
things are happening. The caterpillar basically digests itself, releasing
enzymes which dissolve all its tissues, then re-assembles them into a radically
different form. Total transformation! You too. Inside your heart you died to
self and were born anew, of the Spirit
(John 3:3-8).
Oh God, how could something so beautiful happen in
someone so sinful as I? To be crucified with Christ, it truly is I who no longer
live. Transformation, conversion, is radical. It is Christ who lives in me (from Galatians 2:20).
Nancy P
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