From the Pulpit…

Caterpillar steps and butterfly flight

Butterflies! Last week our order of caterpillars arrived, which we plan to raise into butterflies for release by children and families on Easter Sunday morning. This is the 27th year I have had the blessing of doing this, and I have learned much and have gotten the timing down to have the butterflies emerge the week before Easter.
When they arrived, I used a small paint brush to transfer caterpillars to their individual feeding containers. Now, I’m watching and waiting. Generally, the caterpillars spend 7-10 days eating before they spin their chrysalis. They spend 7-10 days in their chrysalis before emerging as butterflies. Some spend a longer time eating, and some spend a longer time evolving before emerging – a lot like us!
Their environment can speed up or slow down the overall process of being what God intended them to be. Again, a lot like us! To get butterflies ready to fly for Easter release calls for advance planning, timely effort, and prayer. That would be a good formula for all of us and for every project we want to complete!
It’s amazing to watch a caterpillar spin a chrysalis. It’s even more amazing to watch a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis! Butterflies symbolize new life, which make them an excellent illustration for Easter. Their emergence from their chrysalis is symbolic of Jesus’ emergence from the tomb.
Sometimes, however, even the best laid plans can yield unexpected results. One year, following my timing schedule, I had plans for over 100 butterflies to emerge. My timing was the same, but as of the Saturday before Easter, not one butterfly had emerged.
Children and families were given a chrysalis to take home and received the blessing of celebrating the “resurrection” again as butterflies emerged in the days following Easter.
In conclusion: John’s timing: maybe 1. God’s timing: a hundredfold with additional blessings. There’s got to be a lesson in there somewhere.
Butterflies can teach us other important life lessons as well. A man found a cocoon of a butterfly and took it home. One day a small opening appeared, and the man sat and watched the butterfly for a long time as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then the butterfly seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further.
So the man decided to help it out. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily. The man continued to watch the butterfly, expecting that at any moment the wings would enlarge and the butterfly would take flight.
Didn’t happen! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man in his kindness didn’t understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings and giving it strength so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
The same is true for us. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives in order to be strong enough to fly.