The seedbed of Transformation

I believe this will be the last blog post on this idea of Transformation.  But I found the following in my files and I'm not sure who the author is, so I publish this with my apologies to the "unknown" author.

"Farmers in the southern Japanese town of Zentsuji have figured out how to grow their watermelons so they turn out square - by growing them in square glass boxes.  The watermelons are then grown-to-size to fit into Japanese refrigerators.  There is one economic challenge:  they cost $83.

Another reality trumps the entire process.  When you plant the seed of an engineered watermelon, it still ends up becoming a regular round watermelon.  A geneticist would explain that living things cannot transmit acquired characteristics.  "Square" watermelons still produce "round" watermelon seeds.  Just underlying the point of this goofy story are some fruitful realities (pun intended).

Lasting change and transformational power comes from radical, fundamental, inward change.

Most of us spend many years of our Christian lives trying to grow square watermelons, only to find out that their seeds still produce the same old round watermelons.  We try to put lust, greed, anger, impatience, and a lot of other stuff inside a better box to make them somehow fit into a righteous Christian life.  The problem is they produce the same kind of seeds, regardless of how we frame them.

Paul would tell us "flesh is flesh."  It is both unimproved and unimprovable.  The saints of the ages, as well as Christian sages, agree that real change comes another way:  through communion with God that energizes something transformative inside you.

The biblical Christian life is described in all Church traditions as experiencing communion with God, which involves the true desire to get a truth vision of Him.  When we are caught up in mystical communion with the Holy Trinity, He transfigures us in a way no analysis can explain.

The life of God invades our life, and mysteriously something happens in the very seedbed of your existence.  The next time you try to build a frame around your own peculiar watermelon to form it into what you think it should be like, consider instead spending time in the meditation on God's Holy Word and adoring the Lord while listening to Him and receiving His life."