and it completely dissolves.
That's right. The magical thing that's happening inside the cocoon is a tiny bug slowly turning into goop. The brain and a tiny set of wings, which were contained inside the caterpillar's body, are all that's left of the caterpillar it once was. Brain, wings, and goop. Then the goop begins to form a new bug body, and the wings grow larger inside the cocoon, until there's no room left in the tiny grave for the new creature. It fights its way out of the tightly-wrapped husk, but it still isn't finished. After this long process of building a grave, turning to goop, and becoming an entirely different bug, the butterfly still has to go through the work of carefully un-folding its crumpled up and still mostly goopy wings. Then it rests, beautiful but vunerable, while it waits for the wings to dry and solidify.
Only after it has gone through this arduous journey can a butterfly be appreciated. Until then, it's just a bug. A butterfly's purpose in the ecosystem is to pollenate flowers so that new flowers and vegetables and fruits can grow. But before it goes through this process of dissolving into goop and then becoming a whole new bug, the work it does has little to do with pollenation.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
The second major reference is in Revalation chapter 21. To paraphrase: Heaven and earth pass away and God makes a new heaven and a new earth.
People like these verses. And why wouldn't we? They hold the promise that gets us through the hard times, the promise that someday things will be better.
What people forget is the part that comes before things being better: The part where everything ends. People forget that the caterpillar isn't just resting in a bed while it painlessly and magically becomes a butterfly. It's dissolving, turning into goop, and becoming a whole new bug. Jesus talked over and over again about how stepping into the life he has for us will require leaving everything else behind.
What if the caterpillar stayed a caterpillar? What if it decided that building its own grave was frightening, that turning to goop sounded too painful, or that it didn't want to become a new bug because then it might lose its personality as a caterpillar? It would never reach its purpose. It would never become a useful part of the ecosystem. It would be forever trapped as the menace that eats the leaves of our squash plants.
Or worse, what if the caterpillar went through the trial of building its grave, turned into goop, and then gave up because becoming a new bug was just too hard after all it had already been through? Sometimes, for whatever reason, you'll find a long-dead chrysalis with no sign that a butterfly has emerged. Because if you choose to stay in your pain, if you choose not to move past being goop, you can't get what you need to continue living. Maybe the husk will stick around, like a dead chrysalis on a tree branch, but your spirit will suffocate, starve, and die.
God is in the business of new. But new cannot happen while old is in the way. First the old things must be gotten rid of, and then the new can be formed.
Maybe you feel like you're far away from your purpose. Maybe you feel like you're surrounded by pain and everything's falling apart. Maybe, like the butterfly, you feel like you're finally on the other end of the struggle but you still can't move forward.
Just remember: All things new. Step by step, day by day, old things are being removed so that there is room for the new. If you simply continue on the path you know is right - doing the things day by day that will move you closer to your goals - some day you will be able to look at your past from a higher perspective and you will say "That time of my life was painful, and it was frightening, and sometimes I felt like giving up. But today I am a whole new person, I'm fulfilling my purpose like never before, and I know that the pain I went through was just a piece of what brought me to this place."
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