Last week, the death of my sweet “mother-in-love” took us by surprise. Though she was 87, she had been in relatively good health. Then with one sudden stroke, she was gone.
The funeral was a bittersweet event. Those of us who loved her gathered to celebrate her life and trade stories about her. We laughed as we remembered the good times.
But seeing her body in the casket—well, that was another story.
Somehow that body did not look like Mom. The morticians had tried to arrange her face and body to make her appear peaceful. But where was her generous smile? Where were the laugh lines that expressed a combination of joy and mischief? Where was her boundless energy?
As we watched the casket being lowered into the ground, I wondered, “Is this how it ends? Does life just stop and fade into nothingness? Does death have the ultimate victory?”
That night, as I closed my eyes to pray, I watched the lights and colors flickering behind my eyelids, and I envisioned a butterfly emerging.
Then I understood.
When we die, we go through a sort of metamorphosis, just like the butterfly.
Death Brings Transformation
You see, butterflies begin as ugly caterpillars who spend their time eating, growing, and shedding their skin. Then one day, they stop eating, attach themselves to the lid of the jar, and became immobile. Inside their case of hardened skin, a miracle takes place. As their bodies completely dissolve, a metamorphosis takes place. They completely transform. One day, each hard shell bursts open, and entirely new creatures emerge, delicate, beautifully colored, and able to soar through the air.
If the God of creation can design such a miracle in the life of a tiny insect, He can do immeasurably more for His masterpiece of creation—us.
What looks like death and finality is actually just an intermediate stage where transformation is taking place.
I know Mom is soaring in heaven. She is whole, happy, and complete, as she was always meant to be, in the presence of her Creator and Savior.
Scripture for Reflection
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Photos from Justin DoCanto, Bakim Desai, and Sean Stratton on Unsplash
