Renew: To Transform, Be Transformed by God’s MercySample

"To transform, we must be transformed."

One of the most beautiful, tender, and mysterious transformations in creation is the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

They are completely vulnerable and defenseless in their chrysalis, and once they emerge, it is still a while before their wings mature enough for them to fly away.

It is a challenge for naturalists to observe the actual transformation of the caterpillar, but there seem to be some elements of the butterfly within it before it forms the chrysalis.

They shed their skin several times while eating leaves and growing to full length before the final transformation.

Attaching to a branch with some silk, they finally shed their skin to form the chrysalis within which it “disintegrates” to almost an ooze-like body.

Within the safety of its own hard-skinned chrysalis, the cellular transformation occurs, the tubular form of the caterpillar becoming the slim-winged insect marked by bright colors and nectar-slurping skills.

There is only one other creature that goes under a more beautiful, tender, and mysterious transformation: a hurting human upon whom the mysterious mercy of God embraces in a vulnerable chrysalis of reconciling and healing grace.

Like the butterfly, we can’t look inside the soul of a woman or man undergoing transformation, but we can often see the chrysalis-like circumstances hardening around them: suffering, troubles, pain, difficulties, agony, and tears.

To experience mercy is to be touched by a beautiful and tender mystery, and to try and put words to it requires great art: poetry, song, testimony, long healing embraces.

Saint Paul was inviting the Roman Christians to be transformed by the renewing of their mind and spirit by keeping God’s mercy in full view. Eventually, the Christians of Rome would endure persecutions and plagues, slander and starvation, civil war and barbarian hordes, the sacking of the city, and the decline of the empire.

Through it, Christians transformed all they touched when it was done in vulnerable and courageous mercy, sifting through rubble and ruin to give witness to their own metamorphosis by how they cared for the broken and neglected.

This is still how it is today: a mystery of mercy when Christians emerge from their hardships to beautifully and tenderly love, serve, and care for all whom God brings into their life.

We trust that Jesus Christ transforms us all through mercy; may we go and do likewise.