Good morning. Transformation. What is it? What does it mean? How do we understand this mysterious thing of evolution? Change becoming more who we are?

Well, the most important thing to understand about transformation, it’s not a moment, it’s not a thing that happens that somebody walks up to you and said, hey, get your act together. And you go, okay, I got to do it. So you go off to some kind of place where they’ll fix you or something, and then you come back and I did it. I got my act together. I’m who I’m supposed to be. How can you be who you’re supposed to be if the very work of living on this planet for whatever years God has given us is about transformation?

A slow, sometimes imperceptible process of evolution, of changing pieces coming together and things that were fragmented all of a sudden, hey, wait a minute, I see. This is connected to this, and this is to that. And so it’s this slow, like. It’s like a sunrise. The slow light begins to fill this darkness. That’s an image of transformation.

And if you ever think it’s finished, or if you ever think I’ve reached the pinnacle of what I’m supposed to be, then you’ve misunderstood. This journey that you’re on with God’s presence guiding you and all the events in your life being placed there at the right time, at the right moment, so that this growth is going to take place. And one of the most important things to make this transformation continuous and to keep it from being blocked is hope I will get better. I am getting better. Even if I’m going down this dark, dark tunnel. That dark tunnel is a process in which, if I don’t go there, I will not come out the other side.

That’s the conviction that’s necessary if you do have this understanding of what it means to be transformed. Because it’s not your conscious work. It’s not like you said, oh, I know what I should be. I’ll be this. No, it’s taking it step by step, day by day, event by event, crisis by crisis, decade by decade. And then you’re going to sit.

Sometimes you’ll sit back, as I do at my age, and go, my God, was I that person then? You know, how did I change? Well, it wasn’t one event. It wasn’t one retreat. It wasn’t one therapy session. All those were pieces of it.

But it’s just the most wonderful, natural process. You want to say, yes, yes, I am being transformed. And knowing that is like, I don’t know, it’s like being filled with something that gives the most irrational, crazy things in your life meaning. I don’t know how it’s working, but I’m being transformed. And the force behind that transformation is not your will. That you want to be better.

That’s part of it. But it’s a God who says, I love you so much, and I can’t wait for you to be and discover who you really are. You’re beautiful, you’re valuable. You’re loved, you’re safe. Hey, you’re moving in the right direction. Even though it doesn’t feel that way.

Every day is a movement toward transformation.