So we all know that a butterfly represents new life. No mystery there. It’s a great representation of how God transforms our life from our old life in sin to our new life in the light. Did you know that the caterpillar, when it enters the cocoon, actually liquifies before it becomes a butterfly? It’s fascinating! Because it gets broken down to the cells and those cells get rearranged into what becomes the butterfly. Such a testament to the fact that there is a Divine Creator. There are times in our lives when as we grow that we need to break down our structures and become completely dismantled and undone in that secret place before God so that He can begin to rebuild us into something new of His design.
But that’s not really what I want to talk about — I want to talk about the path of the butterfly. Have you ever seen a butterfly fly? It’s a little wonky! It looks like the butterfly has no control over itself. It’s fluttering and flapping and going this way and that! Because it seems as if they are not flapping, they’re falling! Did you know Monarch butterflies flap between 300 and 700 times per minute?
I was out on a walk last week and a little yellow butterfly crossed my path and it looked like it was flitting all over the place. It was in no way a direct path to its destination. It made me think about how our life path is sometimes like that — sometimes the direction suddenly changes. Sometimes a wind blows us back the other way, sometimes we’re falling and sometimes we’re lifting up higher. Sometimes it’s like we have no control over where we’re heading and sometimes we fall right on our target as if we weren’t even trying. We are like that butterfly, totally reliant on God to direct our path, and even when we make detours and wrong turns because our beautiful wonky wings don’t steer all that well, God still gets us to where we need to go. The butterfly always ends up on a flower. Always finds the food God provides. And no matter how crazy and topsy-turvy the path, they do an amazing job at displaying the beauty fo God’s creation. That’s our life! We are beautiful and amazing and display the glory of God at every turn (even when we don’t realize our mess can testify of God’s goodness). We have to trust God 100% to keep us afloat as we go along. If we’re not flying, we’re falling and we have to trust God to take us to the right place we need to go. Even when we can’t see Him working, He’s holding us up! Even when it feels like we’re headed the wrong way, we can’t see that a wind is coming to get us back on course! It’s like I can see Romans 8:28 come to life in the flight path of the butterfly because it doesn’t matter how scattershot the flight looks from above (from my perspective) because the butterfly still makes it to the destination.
For journaling today, read Romans 8 again and journal about the flight path of the butterfly. Is there anything you can relate to in your life? Can you see God working in the waypoints of your life? Step back and take a bird’s eye view to see the major events in your life. Can you see how God’s hand has been on your life all along? How is God speaking to you through His creation (the butterfly) and His Word today?