These are photos of the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly that hang in my office and that I use with our new students, explaining the process of transformation this way: 1.) egg- like the tiniest embryo of a human, this little egg contains all that it will need to become what God intends it to be. 2.) caterpillar- when it hatches, its sole purpose is to grow… it eats, grows and molts and repeats that cycle until it can grow no more.. As infants, children, and adolescents we do much the same thing. We are nurtured and grow bigger and bigger until our physical size is complete. .3.) cocoon- then it tucks itself into its own custom-made hiding pace, its cocoon. While we don’t have a similar stage in the human life cycle, if we become stuck, we may need a “cocoon time” to finish the work of interior growth…. We may have tried, outgrown and cast aside a variety of “identities” in our youth and just not found the one that God intended, but got “stuck” in one in which we are not thriving. But if we go into a protected, cloistered, quiet place, we can listen and wait while the Holy Spirit does that interior work that will complete the development process established by God for humans. This is their Titus 2 time. When they first arrive, like the cocoon in picture 4, we can’t see what’s going on inside, but we know God is at work or they wouldn’t have come. Eventually, the cocoon becomes transparent and the work being done inside begins to be visible from the outside, as observed in picture 5.) Soon after, the fully developed, beautiful creature intended by God emerges and she is ready to begin her journey to where God is taking her, joining others like herself along the way.
This is a beautiful process observed in the Monarch…. It is breathtaking observed in the life of a human being!