DEVOTION: March 7

Our time in the cocoon is healing and protective, the place the caterpillar dies so the butterfly can live. But there always comes a moment when it’s time to emerge. And that can be scary—we’ll no longer be safe and secure, hidden and harbored. And we’ll no longer be able to live and move and have our being as we used to.

Instead, we’ll have undergone such a transformation that life outside the cocoon will seem foreign, requiring us to adapt in ways we haven’t before. Standing when we’ve only crawled. Stretching out with limbs we don’t recognize. Our process of becoming births all things new. It can feel unfamiliar and lunky and awkward; like a newborn foal trying to walk. And because it’s so different from what we’re used to, we sometimes simply avoid it completely.

And we just. never. fly.

God doesn’t make us fly. We have to choose to emerge and stretch, adjusting our eyes to the light and reorienting to our new self. We have to flap our wings to let the blood circulate and them them dry in the sun.

And then, we have to trust we will soar.

When we allow God to bring us through a metamorphosis, we are free be and do everything God has planned in advance for us to do. As ones who now fly, we, like birds, are free to:

• Soar high above the earth in the broad expanse of sky (Genesis 1:20)
• Find our footing after the storm (Genesis 8:12)
• Bring food to those in a valley (I Kings 17:6)
• Soar like eagles (Isaiah 40:31)
• Nest in the beautiful cedars (Ezekiel 17:23)
• Not worry about food and drink (Matthew 6:26)

Embracing a life of becoming is to embrace the ebbs and flows of being in process; recognizing which phase of transformation we’re in, and to settling into it, allowing God to make us beautiful, flying creatures. 

Maybe as we inch toward spring, and witness a metamorphosis of the supernatural kind in the coming weeks, this series will have found you willing to embrace the phase of transformation God has you in. Spend time reflecting on times of transformation in your life before now, and how God has brought you through cycles of birthing, crawling, cocooning and flying. Then praise Him for His marvelous works in and through you. 

“May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it!”
(1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, The Message)