Faith like a Butterfly

As I sit here working in my office, I notice a beautiful butterfly fluttering around outside my window.  It lands on a delicate pink and yellow flower for a minute, then flutters around some more.  So beautiful, so peaceful, seemingly so free and confident.

Then, I think about how that butterfly started.  Remember, it used to be a caterpillar…no wings, no beauty (unless the beholder is my 4-year-old son, then he might argue otherwise).  The caterpillar crawled everywhere it went.  It only looked to the sky as a spectator.  I wonder if it even realized it would one day become one of those beautiful, freely fluttering creatures.  Doubt it.

But it did.  One day it emerged from a cocoon stretching its new appendages for the first time ever, only to discover they were wings!  Big, beautiful, fluttery wings.

But now what!?!

The former caterpillar had to be thinking, “Wait a minute!  What am I supposed to do with these things?  Surely I am not going to flutter around like one of those pretty things I have always admired in the sky above me.  I am a caterpillar.  I crawl…everywhere.  Nobody told me how to use these.  What do I do?  Do I just step off of this branch and hope I don’t crash to the ground?  Yikes!  No way!  I can’t do that!  Not me!  I’m a caterpillar…I crawl…I DON’T fly!  Nobody gave me any lessons.  How do I know these things work!?!”

Can you imagine what could possibly going through that poor little former caterpillar’s mind at that moment!?!
But, at some point, that former caterpillar must have decided to step out on faith and embrace this new creation he had become and stretch those new wings out and…FLY!

He couldn’t SEE the air and wind and drafts that would eventually carry him everywhere he ever needed or wanted to go.  He just had to step out on faith and embrace the new him that he didn’t yet understand at all much less know how to operate.  He had to trust his Maker to hold him up on the wind and help him soar and flutter safely to and fro.

The butterfly I am watching today must have done just that.  He has this fluttering thing down pat.

What about you?  Will you embrace this new you that you cannot fathom nor understand?  Will you step out in faith and trust your Maker to help you soar safely to where you need and even want to go?

You MUST!  This is the new you!  This is your new mode of transportation…the beautiful, fluttering wings of a butterfly…or better yet, those of an eagle!  Embrace them…stretch them out…step off of the branch…and soar on the wind of His provision for you.  Embrace the new creation that you are! You are not just a crawling caterpillar anymore!

Fly on the wings of faith!  He will uphold you!  If He keeps the butterflies and eagles in flight, He will surely do the same for you!

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.  And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  (2 Corinthians 5:14-21)

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.“  (Hebrews 11:1)

“…the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.“  (Romans 4:17b)

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.  Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;  but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary,  they will walk and not be faint.”  (Isaiah 40:29-31)

Fly…Soar…Trust Him NOW!