Spiritual Butterflies

One of God's many marvelous works of creation is the butterfly. Unless you have been living under a rock (or just forgot), butterflies start out as caterpillars. A caterpillar (scientifically known as a larva) begins its life like many of us do, eating everything in sight. Caterpillars eat a lot of leaves to grow longer and more plump until the day they stop eating and decide to hang upside down. At this point, a caterpillar will work to spin itself a silky cocoon. While inside the cocoon, the process of metamorphosis commences the slow transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly (see your local butterfly expert for more details on metamorphosis). The point of this devotional is the emergence of the caterpillar from the cocoon. When the caterpillar emerges from its cocoon, it's no longer a caterpillar, it's a butterfly! The old is gone and the new has come.

The Bible says we have a lot to learn from the caterpillar and the butterfly. The person we were prior to truly knowing Jesus should never be the same person we are after we truly know Jesus. The Apostle Paul explains it best in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." We don't have to eat leaves and go through metamorphosis like a caterpillar, but we should desire to become spiritual butterflies who have shaken off our old selves and become someone new.

The hardest part in the journey to becoming a spiritual butterfly is understanding the journey is never complete. I'm a believer of the saying, "you know when you know" when it comes to someone who really knows Jesus. When you really know Jesus and really love Jesus, your life goal is to try to be as much like Jesus as possible. My prayer for you is to avoid living your whole life like a caterpillar, or maybe worse, never completing the transformation and remaining stuck in the cocoon. Our world depends on spiritual butterflies to embody and share the love of Christ. If you're tired of eating and crawling, remember that you were made to fly. 

​-Jacob

 

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