With every New Year comes talk of change: New Year’s resolutions, how to change our lifestyles and so on. Tonight, we explored the subject of change through Mickey’s drawings…

Mickey, our resident puppet, set us the task of guessing what his drawings were, which proved quite difficult for us!

Ultimately, these were part of his attempt to draw the life cycle of a frog!

These ones were perhaps slightly easier to guess:

Here, he was looking at the life cycle of a butterfly!

Both frogs and butterflies undergo transformation in their lives and Mickey asked if we can change in the same way. The answer is that we can be transformed by Jesus, as Zacchaeus shows us. In Luke 19:1-10, we read how Zacchaeus, a tax collector who was hated by people because of his dishonesty and political allegiances, was changed by his encounter with Jesus. When Jesus met with him, he was so changed that he offered to pay back anyone he had cheated four times over! That is the kind of character transformation which Jesus can bring to us. He changes us not through the metamorphosis experienced by a tadpole or a caterpillar but through His Spirit living within us; we are changed ‘from the inside out.’

Real change is possible, but we need the help of Jesus if we are to change.