Written from the Inside Out

Most of us picture a caterpillar slowly sprouting wings inside its chrysalis, the way a child gradually grows taller. The real science is far more radical — and far more like what God does in a human soul.

When a caterpillar seals itself inside the chrysalis, its body releases enzymes that dissolve nearly every tissue. Muscles, organs, even the digestive system — liquefied. What remains is a kind of biological soup. But scattered through that soup are clusters of cells that scientists call imaginal cells. First documented by the Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam in the seventeenth century, these cells carry the complete blueprint for the butterfly. They were present inside the caterpillar all along, dormant, waiting. Once the old structure breaks down, the imaginal cells activate, multiply, and organize themselves into wings, antennae, compound eyes — an entirely new creature.

Here is what stops me cold: transformation does not come by renovation. It comes by dissolution and rebuilding. The caterpillar cannot keep its old body and simply add wings. It has to let go of everything it was.

The Apostle Paul understood this. "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here." El Shaddai does not redecorate our lives. He remakes us from the inside out — and the blueprint for who we are becoming has been hidden within us all along, waiting for surrender to set it free.