AT THE WATER’S EDGE:

This is a post about redemption and transformation. I don’t know who needs to hear it (besides me!), but God has been giving me not so subtle hints that this is important, as he weaves truths into my life through stories from past and present. Let me start with this story.

This summer we did a trip to Maine with our friends. On the way home we flew Southwest — and if you’ve never flown with them before, they have no assigned seating, only an order for boarding and then it’s a free for all. We did well until our last flight when we boarded close to last and we all just had to pick a seat next to or between two strangers. I was lucky and found an aisle seat. I can be shy and introverted, but on occasion I make a single-serving friend on a flight and we end up chatting the time away. This was one of those flights. I was seated next to a brother and sister, probably in their 50s. As we started chatting the sister made a few comments about her “sobriety anniversary” and her “testimony” so I figured she had a story to tell. After a while I asked if she’d be willing to share a part of her testimony with me. She shared the whole thing — turns out I was practice for her as she’s endeavoring to share her story with youth groups in hopes they won’t repeat her mistakes. To try to make it short, she got into bad habits early, drinking by age 10 and leading into drugs. She gave story after story of these “wake up calls” that God kept trying to send her, including near death experiences, and yet she still wouldn’t listen and kept going back to the same old stuff. It took a toll, as it does, on her life, health, relationships, career. It took until she saw her own mug shot on TV for drunk boating when she finally realized that this is not who she was meant to be and the double life she was living needed to stop. Her whole story she kept quoting this verse as it kept coming up as truth she needed to know and remember:

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" -- 2 Corinthians 5:17

And she truly was a new creation! She was just bursting with the joy of the Lord and of the redeemed. The old person was completely gone with zero desire or impulse to turn back there. It was incredible to her her testimony on this flight back from Baltimore. And I thanked her for sharing and told her I’d be praying for her and her ministry.

Then, I get home from our trip and start unpacking my things. I go to the bathroom and realize that this is the Bible verse card that has been sitting on my bathroom counter:

Okay, God. I see you want me to remember this!

My husband’s parents had graciously watched our kids for us while we were gone. While at our house, my mother in law had given me some devotional books that are just beautiful. I put them in my sunroom and opened up to the first page of one of them. Can you guess what was there?

Okay, God. You really, really want me to pay attention to this. I’m listening, but not quite sure where you are leading me. I don’t have a story of drastic transformation like my flight friend, as I came from a Christian upbringing and accepted Jesus as a child. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still battle my old self and struggle to live out my life as that new creation.

I was reminded of this transformation again as I was reading my daughter a science book that went through the lifecycle of a butterfly. Metamorphosis. Somewhere in my brain I recalled learning that the Greek root is metamorphoō — which is the word used in Romans 12:2 and translated as “transformed”

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." -- Romans 12:2

So there it was again. We are a new creation. Transformed as a butterfly is transformed from a caterpillar into a completely new creature. How easy it is to conform to this world and just enjoy being a caterpillar, munching on and swallowing whatever the messages the world throws our way. To envelop ourselves completely in God’s truth takes effort and intention, but we come out completely transformed and made beautiful, to the glory of God. How do we do this exactly? We are called to renew our minds.

That reminded me of an old story. A camp story from when I was a teen. I  think it was a winter retreat, actually, at a camp who always brought in amazing speakers. This time, the speaker preached on Romans 12 and used a popular Sister Hazel song to illustrate it. The lyric goes, “if you want to be somebody else, change your mind.” That lyric and corresponding Bible verse always stuck with me. Becoming a new creation means a renewal of my mind, a change in the way I think and what I think about.

Okay. It’s easy to think about bad things. To worry. To focus on the negative things that have happened or might happen. To dwell on things that are unhelpful, if not unholy.

To bring it full circle, I was listening to a sermon I had missed at church. It was largely on Philippians 4:8 – a verse a couple friends and I had memorized this past year, and no stranger to this blog.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." -- Philippians 4:8

So this is what God has me meditating on. We are called to put off the old self and live in the new self (Ephesians 4: 20-24). We are new creations in Christ. It’s easy to fall into old sin patterns but God calls us to renew our minds and be transformed — and He gives explicit directions on the kinds of things we are supposed to be dwelling on.

How would our days be different if we mediated on what is good and right and true? How much more peace and joy would we have if we focused on what is pure and lovely and praiseworthy? How much more encouraged would we be by thinking about what is admirable and excellent? So that is my challenge, to be continually renewed as I try to keep my mind on that which God says is good, that I may live my life as one who is a redeemed and transformed child of God.