{Butterfly} Transformation

I follow (and then when they get annoying unfollow) certain accounts on Twitter. These accounts are often those run by Christian young people who seem to live their lives by tweeting. But once in a while one of them will post something that actually catches my attention, which is why I tolerate one or two. The other night, @GentforChrist posted this:

Why do we give God just the good parts our life? He wants our wretched hearts so He can purify them.
— Imperfect Gent (@GentForChrist) February 12, 2014

At first it didn't seem like much more than trite, Christian lip service. I mean, haven't we all heard this a thousand times, practically every single Sunday at church? But I kept thinking about it, and the more I thought about it, the more astonishing and profound it became. I tend to come to Jesus with the parts of me that are "purified", the things I believe are "ready" to receive His touch. The parts that I have surrendered already, or that I've already asked him to remove. But see, here's the thing: God isn't in the business of removing; He transforms.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

-Romans 12:1-2

God doesn't want to wait for me to try (and fail) to remove a certain sin or habit or struggle from my life before coming to Him as if He can't take the sight of it. No, He wants my raggle-taggle life and heart. He wants that original, sinful material that is so soiled and worn and wrung-out and wrong, and He wants to transform it into something beautiful and pure.

He wants to take the impatience and melt it down into contentment.
He wants to transform the lust into purity.
He wants to bend the greed into a ring of charity.
He wants to re-mold the bitterness into compassion and the selfishness into love.

By wanting "all of us", He wants the bad with the good, the evil with the pure because we have nothing good or pure outside of what He's given us. When I thought on this concept, it was like some things I've always thought clicked with what I wanted to feel. I mean...I had always known this concept of transformation, but I'd never taken the time to understand it: that I don't have to wait to feel accepted by Him until we've removed the laundry list of issues I have. Yes, I know there are some things in my life that are yet to be transformed but He's working on it. The other night, once I realized that it's not that things will be removed, but that they'll be transformed, a peace settled on my heart.

I understand transformations.

I'm a writer. I'm an artist. I get the fact that things don't go from unformed one moment to flesh and blood the next. There's a creation going on. We don't get from Winter to May in a flash of sunlight. There's a thaw, a relenting, a release. There's a bud, and a blossom, and then the summer comes in its flush of fruit and light and joy. A book isn't written by thinking, "This is a book" and there it is, all eighty-thousand words of it. No. It's sentence by sentence transforming abstract thoughts into tangible words and meanings. A song isn't written in a blinding burst of music. It is notes and melodies and harmonies strung together in intricate harmony.

Jesus is transforming me little by little, day by day. Sometimes I perceive it, sometimes I don't, but He wants all of me. Every little bit. The scrappy parts. The dark parts. The sad and lonely and angry parts. He wants all of it, because the Conjurer of all conjurers, the Magician of all magicians, the Artist of all artists is working with me--all of me--to sculpt me more like Him.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Try me, and know my anxieties;

And see if there is any wicked way in me,

And lead me in the way everlasting.

-Psalm 139:23-24-