Butterflies

As long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with butterflies. I would collect caterpillars and grow them in jars under our picnic table. I would clean the jars and add fresh leaves every day. There were often several different kinds of caterpillars under there at any one time. One of my favorites was the monarch butterfly. I remember collecting many caterpillars while watching my grandfather fly his remote control airplanes at a friend’s farm. I’m sure I watched more butterflies than planes back then.

Caterpillars have a beauty all their own, at least to those who appreciate them, but compared to the final butterfly, many might describe them as drab or just down-right ugly! After a week or so they would mature and stop eating. They would climb to the top of the jar lid and hang head-down in a “J” shape. After about 24 hours they spit their skin and voila!, they become a chrysalis. One to two weeks later, they would begin to darken and the butterfly’s colors begin to show. I remember, at one of my birthday parties, I had one out on display as it began to “eclose”. (That’s the fancy word for the process of coming out of a chrysalis.) They come out with wings that are shriveled and folded. As they pump fluid into their wings, the wings expand and finally stiffen as they dry. It never got old. Let’s face it, I was a science nerd back then also.

The butterfly starts as a tiny egg, spends a few weeks as a caterpillar, changes into a chrysalis, and finally exits as a beautiful butterfly. It’s interesting to note that while it is a chrysalis, it disassociates into a seemly formless “soup” of cells that then reorganize into the final butterfly. That’s pretty amazing for such a tiny creature.

I like to think of this life as the caterpillar stage. We are just getting ready for who we will become. Someday we will be transformed and have our heavenly bodies.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:7 NIV

who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.  Philippians 3:21 NIV

 Ya! We don’t have to be lowly caterpillars forever!