Tuesday, August 29th, 2023.
Well, I thought I was done with the butterfly blogs, but I now have three monarch caterpillars and another black swallowtail growing in my house. All four are now in their chrysalis stage. I keep telling people we are in a “butterfly season”. This is not really a save-the-butterflies experience. This truly is a God-orchestrated chain of events so that He can take us deeper with Him. He has asked us to get intimate with this process because there are so many similarities between the stages of a butterfly and the stages of our spiritual walk. And, as I am just beginning a journey with these blogs it’s quite evident that He also wants me to share this message with whomever is reading the blogs.
The thing that God is speaking to me lately is about the incredible innateness within these creatures. I’ll just recap its life briefly. A female butterfly lays eggs usually on the underside of a leaf and then flies away. These eggs hatch in a few days and a caterpillar emerges. This caterpillar then crawls around and eats leaves for the next few weeks. In this time it sheds its skin four or five times as it outgrows each covering. Before it sheds its last skin, it finds a suitable place to attach itself using a self-produced silk string. Once it’s securely suspended it wriggles out of its skin for the last time revealing the chrysalis. This is the covering that will house them for 10-14 days as they undergo drastic and intricate changes. Keep in mind, this entire process that I have briefly summarized is done without any instruction manual or parental guidance. I keep going back to the scripture in 1 King 19:11-12:
11 …but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice
It’s that still small voice that spoke the code for this process into existence at Creation and it continues to speak into every caterpillar since. In Isaiah 55:11 it says:
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
The words that he spoke at Creation still go forth today and have never yet returned without completing their purpose. So what about us as spiritual beings? Just over 2,000 years ago God sent his son Jesus as the Word of God to go forth and save humanity from death. As he was nearing the end of his life on earth Jesus said in John 14:26:
26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.
Just like the innate voice of God instructing the butterfly life cycle, we too as the sons and daughters of God have a spiritual innateness from the Holy Spirit. How well are we living out of this spiritual innateness? Do we depend on the Holy Spirit for everything we do from the challenging to the mundane? I’ll admit I am not where I want to be in this area. It’s easy to seek Him as we consider a job move or a house move or an expanding family or health decisions, but do we desire his presence and guiding as we do dishes, fold laundry, run errands or vacuum the floor? I am learning more and more the value of not making an invitation of his presence situationally dependent. It’s amazing to me how much he speaks to me when I am doing the day to day tasks that used to be boring. I often find myself having to stop dishes to write something he is telling me or sit in the parking lot at a store to look up a scripture he impressed upon my heart.
Final Thoughts…
I don’t know about you, but I want to stop feeling like I have a strict schedule to follow and instead let the Holy Spirit lead my entire existence, day and night. I desire to rely on Holy Spirit so deeply that if he says it’s time to shed a skin, I will do it. If he says it’s time to hang still in a chrysalis for 10 days, I will do it. If he says it’s time to stretch my wings and fly, I will do it. My schedule and my plans hold no significance compared to the incredible book God has written for me in heaven. I don’t want my earthly vision that is bound by time and space to ever take precedence over the eyes of my spiritual innateness. I want to see like the caterpillar sees. It doesn’t worry or try to plan out how to turn into a butterfly. It just lets the same voice that spoke it into existence continue to guide it as it walks along every step of its journey.