Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye

I have always heard that my conscience is like a window. If I don’t take time everyday to keep it clean the dirt will slowly begin to build up until eventually it is caked with mud. That is very true. If I don’t exercise to have a conscience void of offense there is a gradual and almost imperceptible build up of offenses that eventually becomes more than I can bear. By the Lord’s mercy I have built up a habit of confessing my sins to him and others when I offend them. What I have come to realize is that there is so much more than having a “clean window”. The same solvent that is washing us is also depositing something eternal. There is a familiar Christian hymn titled Rock of Ages. The first stanza says:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save me from its guilt and power. 

This is based on two passages from the Bible. The first passage is found in Exodus 17:6 God tells Moses to strike the rock and water will come out of it so the people can drink. This passage is also used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:4. He says that they drank of a spiritual rock which followed them and the rock was Christ. In John 19:34 when Christ was hanging on the cross a soldier pierced His side with a spear and out came blood and water. Here’s where the double cure comes in. The blood washes away our sin and the water deposits a little something special.

There are a few pictures of this in nature. Petrified wood is a great example. A tree falls into a stream that slowly and imperceptibly washes away the old, fallen, dead element from the tree and deposits something solid. Tiny rock particles and minerals in the water infuse the dead wood with another element. Since this change happens on a very small, atomic scale it takes millions of years.

Another example is seen in the formation of pearls. A grain of sand or a parasite gets into an oyster and wounds it. The oyster then secretes something precious from its wound, its very life. Over the years, the irritating object is covered with enough layers of nacre to form what is known as a pearl. Nacre is the blood or life juice that oozes out of the oyster’s wound. Pearls are also found at the end of the Bible which is extremely significant.

There is another interesting example found in the Guinness Book of World Records. The world’s largest paintball is located in Alexandria, Indiana. It all started when Michael Carmichael accidently dropped a baseball into a bucket of paint. He decided to paint it everyday and see what happened. Here are some interesting quotes I found about it.

“Mike does not have a paint ball, which is a hollow shell filled with liquid paint. He has a ball of paint: a solid mass of thousands of hardened microscopically-thin layers, methodically applied atop each other month after month, year after year.”

“For two years I just dipped it, painted it, dipped it, painted it.”

 “But then it got to the size where it looked kinda neat, and all my family said keep on painting it. And I’ve continued on for 27 1/2 years.”

“I put four coats on it today,” Mike says, casually adding that Glenda has painted the ball 8,000 times. “I don’t get over-possessed with it,” Mike explains. “I’ll come out here if I feel like painting it. And sometimes I don’t. I’ve gone as long as a year not painting it. I had kids that were little. I just wasn’t enthused about it at the time.”

 “It will be a roadside attraction for the world.”

Here’s what it looks like now

To tie it all together, we are all the parasite that wounded Christ on the cross. When we get saved and baptized into Christ’s death (Romans 6:3) we are the tree that falls into the water. Through many little conversations with Jesus Christ, day by day, something very precious is deposited and added to us, Christ’s very life. This process makes us precious enough to “steal” when Christ comes as a thief in the night. This process is called transformation and is slowly and imperceptibly transforming our inward nature by removing our dead, corruptible element and adding Christ’s eternal life. Like petrified wood, there is still the outward appearance of wood but when you touch it, there is something different about it. It is solid and weighty. The Hebrew word for glory actually means weighty.

Colossians 1:27 says Christ in us is the hope of glory. Some other verses that talk about  this transformation are Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18. Also interesting is Philippians 3:21 which says that Jesus Christ will transfigure or transform the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory. Finally 2 Corinthians 4:16,17 says that our inner man is being renewed day by day which produces an eternal weight of glory.

If you want to have another drop of Jesus added to you, talk to Him. This is what it means to have eternal life. It is something we can experience now and unto the day of eternity.