Two different thoughts on the same thing.

I'm not sure what spawned the conversation, but for just a few minutes last night Coley and I had a conversation, almost in passing, that should be passed on. For some reason or another butterflies were brought up. I told Coley they were my favorite way of thinking about how God changes us.
We're told in Scripture that, "17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17. Nothing, in my mind, depicts this better than a butterfly. It starts as a caterpillar, a sluggish little thing that goes about its day serving it's purpose. It does have a purpose, for sure. We all have reasons we're here long before we accept Christ. Everything that little caterpillar does is in preparation for a cocoon.
It now curls itself up, makes it home to transform, and waits. Who knows what goes on in that cocoon to make the caterpillar into a butterfly. It's a marvel in and of itself. But then the butterfly breaks free! It is nothing like it's old self. It even goes by a different name. It moves different. It eats different. It protects itself differently. And here's the kicker for me: It can't go back. No matter how hard the butterfly tries, it can never take on the form of a caterpillar ever again. It doesn't do anything that even resembles it's old life.
In the same way when we take on living for Jesus, we become a new creation. Everything changes, and we can never go back. And really, who would want to? Once you've experienced that freedom and grace of a butterfly, why would you want to return to a caterpillar?


I have an odd tree outside my house. We planted it when I was young, maybe a couple years old, and for years it was just a lemon tree. It grew to be huge, overshadowing most other things in our yard. It became a landmark for people: "It's the house next to the one with the huge lemon tree out front". Then something funny happened about five years ago. To our amazement, it started producing other food. It was now our lemon-grapefruit-orange tree. Why did this just now happen? Is that even possible; well it must be because I see it. God chose to wait all these years to let that fruit finally come out. We enjoyed it for these last few years, as did our neighbors. Unfortunately, a storm this last winter tore the tree apart. It's now shriveled, bare, and producing nothing. Despite our care to it, it still looks pretty sad. Green leaves are finally starting to show promise, though.
Isn't this too how God works? He waits years sometimes for us to bear new fruit, good fruit, and then a storm strips us of everything we bore. But now it, too, is a new creation. It's something it never sought out to be, and it's growing in it's new roots. I hope I can say the same after a storm has rocked me. After the anger with God fades for stripping me, after the confusion of why He does what He does, or questioning that there had to have been a million other ways to make His point but that way... May I grasp my new roots, and start to show promise, too.