A Year In My Life Through Pictures Day 7

Beside my driveway, hanging from a evergreen tree branch is hanging this caterpillar cocoon. I've seen it dangling there for a few days now and it catches my sight each time I pull up. I guess I stare it down because I expect a magnificent monarch butterfly to emerge on cue from my gaze. Doesn't look like that's going to happen, especially since I found out it is a Bagworm cocoon that is housing a moth and not a butterfly. But it is equally impressive in its own right.

Just think about this creature inside this cocoon. It made this house to protect it during its metamorphosis from a worm/ caterpillar into something that bears no physical resemblance to what it once was. Albeit a moth and not a beautifully marked up butterfly, but I am still as equally impressed with the intricacy of things that must be happening at just the right time, to cause just the right transformation.

Thinking about the cocoon as I've seen it hanging on the limb, my mind of course has gone to 1 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. The worm or caterpillar is us before we come to a knowledge of our sinfulness, the cocoon is our binding of sin and our release from the cocoon is our re-birth as the new creation in Christ. We may physically have the same DNA structure, but we are radically and visibly changed into something much more than we were. Our old self is left behind, there is no resemblance to what we were. In fact if you had taken a picture before, in our worm/ caterpillar state and compared it to our new self - you couldn't see anything that would even make you think we were the same.

That is the power of the True God. He has the power to change a worm into a butterfly and the power to change a sinner into a saint. Praise God that He saves sinners, worms like me that were quite content with living life as a sinner. I loved my sin and couldn't get enough of it. But God had different plans for me. He wanted to show me His love and grace and initiate a metamorphosis in my whole being. The same voice that said "Let there be light" said "Let Jeff believe". The same Power that created the universe out of nothing loved me and using that same power made me a new creature, one that may bare the same DNA, but is oh so different than the old me. And the good news about that is just as a butterfly or moth can never revert back to their previous state, neither can I. God changed me and that means I am forever changed. Now that is eternal security, putting all faith in God to change and sustain.

How wonderful is that? Have you experience the re-birth? Have you cried out to God in your wretched state and laid all hope and trust in Him? The One that can make you a new creation that will praise and glorify Him instead of shunning and denying Him.