(Photo courtesy of pdphoto.org)
In the movie, THE REPLACEMENTS, while urging his offensive squad to give their all for one last game, substitute Quarterback Shane Falco says, “Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever.” While I might like to contend with Mr. Falco about his first and third assertions at some future point, I have (blessedly) had almost no experience with physical scars, and thus have no basis to know how attractive they are to chicks. And, while I think I now know a little bit about spiritual scars, I have no way of knowing whether chicks dig them or not. What I do know about spiritual scars is that they are all but invisible to people who don’t have any.
Does the future butterfly feel pain while it is forming (re-forming?) in its chrysalis? That is an answer I would like to know. With us humans, when God is shaping (or re-shaping) us, there is usually a good deal of pain. When the caterpillar moves along its entombed journey to its new life, does it sleep a deep, painless sleep; or does it struggle against the process; resisting, holding back? When God is pulling the skin away from the little pilgrim’s body to use in creating its wings, does it feel pain? I do know that we hold back, resisting the process of becoming.
And, another challenge to our personal reformations, we are not good at recognizing the process in ourselves or others. As a youth, the older, wiser, “solid” people I met (and somewhat idolized), those whose discipleship of Jesus appeared effortless, seemed to my limited experience to just BE that way. Process was not a concept I thought much about. And when I would read some author claiming that “real” change is “forged in pain” or some similar allusion, I usually thought, ungraciously I now see, that this person must be deficient in some way. Else, why have to go through the pain? Obviously (so my youthful thoughts went), God could easily change those who would just yield to his loving touch; only the truly recalcitrant would have to be wrenched into shape. Since then, experience has taught me much.
My experience has been that, as God shapes (wrenches, pounds, slams, stretches, flattens, crams) me, I begin to perceive a tiny bit more of the process, in myself and in others. I have been shocked lately to realize—after all these years of thinking I was on the potter’s wheel, being spun by God into a vessel of significance—that I am still just a lump of clay being “thrown.” God has just been loosening me up, making me more malleable for the real work ahead. Here I thought, based on the pounding I’ve taken so far, that I was on my way to being a God-shaped vessel, destined for spiritual service of some importance; having completely forgotten that the truly delicate work of spiritual shaping can only be done with the most malleable of materials.
So, when I observe the delicate beauty of the butterfly, when I find myself thinking “WOW!” about the glory of God’s handiwork in that creature, I have to remind myself that the little pilgrim got like that the hard way. In fact, there really is no other way. If a butterfly is to have wings—and how to be one without them?—then it must, somewhat like Eustace in Lewis’ VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, have its skin pulled away from its body; without that skin there can be no wings.
And, if I am to become what God has in mind for me, I must transit the process, whatever it is, however challenging it may seem at the time. But, unlike the caterpillar-cum-butterfly, I do not have to take this journey alone. There are others. And … I am, finally, beginning to recognize them.
Praise God.