Fly or Stay Rooted
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17
This is one of my absolute favorite scriptures. It always makes me think of a butterfly, and most of the time when you see this scripture posted somewhere, it will have a butterfly with it.
I recently read a quote by author Trina Paulus that asked, "How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
When you think about it, life as a caterpillar isn’t too bad. What are the benefits of being a caterpillar? Well, for one thing, caterpillars get to crawl around on the ground and just eat the leaves that are in front of them. They can climb up branches and just sit there and stuff themselves for hours on end.
But butterflies need to fly all around, search for just the right flowers then suck all the nectar out of them. They have to worry about the wind and the rain. That’s a bit more work than just eating what is in front of you, moving forward a few inches and eating some more.
Once you’ve transformed into a butterfly, you realize that you don’t have much in common with your old caterpillar friends who are still on the ground. It can be lonely way up high in the sky if you are the only one up there flying. You might be enjoying your wings and not really want to go back to crawling around on the ground, but staying afloat is hard work. The wind and the weather affect you a lot more now than it did when you didn’t have wings.
But, when you are a caterpillar, you can only climb as high as the tree you are in. A butterfly can go pretty much as high as he wants and can go far distances too, but a caterpillar is pretty much stuck where he is. The butterfly will see other beautiful butterflies flying around, peacefully landing and enjoying a treat while carrying the pollen on to other plants, helping them to produce new seeds. Most plants need butterflies and other pollinators to reproduce.
Butterflies and caterpillars kind of remind me of the choice of either pursuing Christ, or staying rooted in the world. Of course there might be instances when we remember how much safer we felt when we were on the ground, but we also often felt discouraged and lonely. But oh, life as a butterfly is certainly not boring. The sights that we see and the fulfillment we feel is often indescribable! That doesn’t mean we won’t have to deal with the weather, but it is life-changing and most definitely worth it. If you pursue God, you have to be willing to give up your legs and gain wings so that you can soar toward the high calling of Christ.
I think I’ll stay a butterfly.
Have a blessed day!
~Bev