The Truth about Transformation

Transformation is a wonderful thing. It can be slow, sometimes imperceptible, but it’s results can be delicious.

There’s a pear tree in my backyard that was bare a few months ago.  First came beautiful blossoms, then leaves and then just the smallest buds of young fruit.  This week, I was up on a ladder trying to get all the pears that were bending the branches with their weight.  The yellow ones were soft, sweet and warm from the sun.  Delicious! I think my son ate six.

Like those pears, our purpose is to be transformed into something delicious.  All the potential lies within and around us, and like a Master Chef (yes, I’m mixing metaphors here), our Creator has made each of us with a plan in mind.  Our transformation into the men and women we were created to be is often just as slow and imperceptible as with those pears. But, the end is no less sweet.

I’ve been reading parables in the Gospel of Mark chapter four: The Sower, the growing seed and the mustard seed.  All are parables about how the Kingdom of heaven infiltrates and transforms us.  C.S. Lewis famously described it as a good infection, changing us from the inside out.  Jesus used seed metaphors because the change is slow, sometimes imperceptible. 

Waiting for the pears to come could be agonizing.  Instead, all our family could do is go on with life, nurture the tree and notice when the fruit was ready.

Its that way with our personal transformation too.  Rather than waiting for it to come, or beating up on ourselves because we haven’t arrived, we’re invited to get on with life.  Nurture our transformation and take notice when the work has been happening.  Live, love, reflect.  Sounds like a wonderful rhythm.

Now, I was raised in a tradition that heavily emphasized personal transformation; you might hear that prejudice coming out.  I’m currently in a tradition that includes societal transformation. In Christ’s Church, there has been a chasm between the personal gospel of one stream, and the social gospel of the other.  I’m glad to see signs of a bridge being built, because these two streams are part of the same River (to borrow an image from Richard Foster).  They are intimately connected; two sides of the same coin. 

Individuals cannot be genuinely transformed by God’s love without becoming means of transformation to the whole of God’s Creation.  “Grace is not grace if it is not expressed in life” says Karl Barth. 

And, the whole of creation becomes a means of God’s transformative work. “Where can I go from Your Spirit?” the writer asks in Psalm 139.

(Is it any wonder that the Christian view of the end includes the idea that some pieces won’t fit? When all is made right, when creation and each of us have been transformed and finally know ourselves as we have always been known by our Creator, what place will there be for the darkness that had prevented us from realizing this identity? The darkness must cease to be.)

One last thought.  I could nurture and notice the pear tree, but I couldn’t make the pears grow.  In the same way, I can nurture and notice my personal transformation, but I can’t make it happen. That’s God’s work, and the Christian hope is for a final day when this work will be finished and all will be made well.  Until then, all I can do is join God’s great transformative endeavor, within me and in the whole of Creation.