‘The Advent of Bob’

One autumn afternoon, back when I was an elementary teacher, my fourth-graders came in from recess in an unusual state of excitement: one of them had found an enormous green caterpillar and carried it in from the playground. The caterpillar was easily the size of my thumb and covered with sparse hair. In my mind, I heard Lord Farquaad from Shrek cry out, “Oh! It’s disgusting!”

My student said, “His name is Bob! Can he be our class pet?

And so, Bob the Caterpillar came to live with us in the fourth-grade classroom. Someone brought a little plastic terrarium from home, and a small crew of amateur entomologists created a welcoming habitat out of leaves, grass clippings, and the biggest stick that would fit inside.

A week or so later, Bob attached himself to the underside of the stick and disappeared into a chrysalis. We were all excited. It was only a matter of time before Bob emerged, transformed into a butterfly. A quick review of the World Book Encyclopedia suggested we may have as little as two weeks to wait.

Only … that’s not what happened. October gave way to November, then December. At least once a day, someone checked on Bob’s chrysalis, which showed no change. Some of us began to fear that something had gone wrong, and that Bob was destined to remain a pupa forever.

Winter Break came and went. We reviewed the legacy of Dr. King and exchanged Valentines. And then, one frigid morning in late February, in the middle of a math lesson, one of the fourth-graders sitting closest to Bob’s terrarium gave out a cry: Bob’s chrysalis was moving.

We all leapt to our feet and rushed to the little tank, all thoughts of equivalent fractions driven from our minds. It was true: Bob’s long-dormant vessel was wiggling.

Over the next hour, Bob emerged in the manner of most such transformations: slowly, haltingly, inevitably. Even though we all knew what was supposed to happen, finally encountering Bob as a butterfly was still amazing. Bob was beautiful.

The wait for Bob’s transformation took so long that many of us (including me) had given up any real hope of it ever coming to pass. Waiting isn’t easy, especially when we wait for the kind of miraculous, sudden change of the kind we read about in Genesis — God speaks: “Let there be physical reality,” and BOOM. There is light. Land. Life. And God sees that it is good.

As we enter the holy season of Advent, the Church remembers that waiting isn’t always easy. Sometimes, there is suffering or groaning. The chrysalis can lie dormant for so long that we may despair of the change ever coming.

And still.

And still, we wait. We hope for things not yet seen. We wait with as much patience as we can. We wait with all of Creation for the coming of Jesus, and for the coming revelation of the glory of God.

Amen.