Metamorphosis (or Help Me!)

Metamorphosis (or Help Me! I'm Trapped in a Glass Case of Emotion)

He pities our frame. He knows that we are dust. 

I know I do not have a handle on the divine, but at the same point, I don’t think I have a handle on my humanity either. 

I don’t know how to tackle it. I’ll never know what it is to be fully divine, for that is God’s job, but now I fear I don’t know what it is to be fully human anymore.

Perhaps it’s because I’m in a point of transition; from a new birth into a new life. 

A shedding of the old into the new… however, it’s gradual. The process of change has already started, but I’m yet to walk into the fullness, into the reward of it yet.

So it’s as if I were trapped in a continuum between humanity and eternity; a reflection of dust slowly transforming into the reflection of light.

The only thing I know is that I’m held by the grace of my Saviour: I am no longer fully of the old, but I am not yet fully renewed.

I am however, fully myself. 

I’m impatient and I’m impulsive. So often I find myself attempting to lash out through fleeting moments trying to meet a need which can only be fulfilled eternal source or clutching at something which is yet to come into season or full bloom. Drinking of shallow, muddy waters in the hope of fulfilling the void but yet the sensation of satisfaction is temporary; my sense of thirst longing for a water that is alive.

It’s in these moments that I’m operating out of my self, not my like-Christness. When I’m in my like-Christness, I’m more patient. I’m willing to wait and make decisions in faith. When I’m in myself, that’s when I wade into the murky.

There is nothing the grace of God cannot cover or redeem, and thankfully He will keep doing so – but nevertheless I find myself trapped in this continuum.  

Or perhaps the word ‘trapped’ is not the correct definition for this feeling. Maybe ‘frustrated’ is. In much the same way a caterpillar is trapped within a cocoon, the cocoon is catalyst – it is an incubator. It creates the necessary conditions for which the caterpillar needs to undergo its transformation into a butterfly. A necessary frustration.

Perhaps this feeling of being ‘trapped’ is really the feeling of metamorphosis. A necessary phase in what can only be described as a beautiful miracle of grace.

Additional Scriptures:

Philippians 1:6
Psalm 103:14
Romans 7:7-26
John 4:10

proseMark Dunlopprose, poetry