This butterfly - named Morpho - landed on my sweater as we went through the Butterfly House (www.missouribotanicalgarden.org) near St. Louis a few years ago. During March, there are thousands of these magnificent creatures flying and landing everywhere.It seems appropriate that March is the month of morphing. We enjoy lengthening days and we may choose to take on some practice that helps us along in the process of changing during Lent. These forty days of preparing to celebrate Jesus' resurrection almost always consume the month of March. Now it is the beginning of April and two weeks until Easter.
It is a good time to look for signs of transformation.
The word metamorphosis (the change process that a caterpillar goes through before becoming a butterfly) comes from the Greek word:
metamorfow
It is used in 2 Corinthians 3. Paul is giving details to the early church about life in the Spirit. He compares the splendor of God's glory as reflected on Moses' face with the greater glory that is now available to us in Christ through the working of the Spirit in our lives. He writes in 2 Cor. 3:17-18: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed (metaphorphosis) into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit."
I am routinely amazed that God is so powerfully and personally invested in my life. Change is possible and substantial change - even a metamorphosis - is what God does in us. We change by degree and these changes are sometimes even imperceptible to us. I know that that the Spirit is alive and powerfully working in me. In the last week, I have gotten a glimpse of growth that the Spirit is working into me. It is a glorious reflection of God in me. This vibrant healing begins to pop like the blue of the Morpho. It takes more than a month, but the beautiful benefits are worth the wait.
