Butterflies.

Curious winged creatures of beauty.  A symbol of grace and elegance, maybe whimsical, enlightening perhaps.  Happiness. They fly by all the time.  We see them while walking in a park, driving along the roadsides, and even on our back porch flowerpot.  They flutter about, almost haphazardly, seeming to have no cares in the world, not a thought or preoccupation, nothing but their lost escape in a sunny summer daydream.  

We have our favorites.  The tiger swallowtail.  The red admiral.  The common buckeye.  For those who want to test their knowledge, how about a rare one?  The regal fritillary, who has almost disappeared from our half of the United States, but for some reason has decided to make appearances in the center of the Keystone State lately, drawing a lot of attention and public press. 

As a 4-H kid on our dairy farm, I used to catch all sorts of butterflies to study and watch.  On the farm here in Pennsylvania we had an unimaginable assortment of them, and that by the droves, as I was out catching them daily to see what I could find.  Sweet flowered hayfields in bloom had great magnetizing strength, drawing a fluttering journey to our land with an incredible gravitational pull.  I found new and exciting ones often.  Big ones.  Bold ones.  Bright ones.  Rare ones. Entomology goes hand in hand with a ten-year-old boy you might say.

If you haven’t had the chance to get outside yet this summer to observe the amazing beauty of a butterfly, you better hurry up.  Now is the time.  It is August.  Butterflies are in the adult part of the life cycle right now.  It's perfect timing to see these beautiful creatures in all their splendor.

To do so, we stopped by the Delmont Library last week.

I admit.  I was impressed.  The creative genius of Library Director Denni Grassel can be seen everywhere you turn. The library was amazing.  There are library programs for children throughout the summer, designed to put a book in the hands of youngsters and engage them in reading.  Actually, it's more than reading. If you take another step you will see that learning takes place here, and that, done fun style. Some children learn hands-on, and it was obvious that the butterfly event was one of those experiences.  Kudos to the whole Delmont Library staff.  Awesome event. Awesome stuff. Loved it. Thanks for a great program.

I could not believe how many people were in attendance.  It was an absolutely top-notch kid’s event.

Of course, the highlight of the event was the actual butterfly itself.  

Really, it was ingenious.  The library had housed the biggest bug sanctuary I've ever seen inside its doors so children could come to watch the life cycle of the monarch butterfly.  Through the summer you could watch them grow, munching on milkweed.  Larvae grew, captivating young minds. They ate. They got big.  Then one day they could be found hanging in rest as they formed their chrysalis.  Kids could watch the transformation.  What a remarkable thing for children to learn.  For days you could appreciate them, expecting what would soon happen. On the day of the release. . . there was nothing but energy, excitement, and happy people everywhere.

To be set free.

Makes me think.

Yes, the butterflies were released into freedom that day in Delmont, Pennsylvania.  As children’s hands were lifted in the air, the fresh taste of freedom was taken to the skies.  One by one, orange-red flutters of joy mirrored the happiness in people’s faces as new wings took flight.  Eyes watched them climb higher and higher in the air.  Smiles. Laughter. Awe.  A fresh sense of entertainment was satisfied as the delicate creations of orange and black gained true independence for the first time.  Refreshing.  Enlightening.  Free.

Do you want to be free?  Do I? Don't we all?

So what does this all mean to me? To take things deeper, I realized how we can apply it to our own lives.  Today, I look around in the real-life world.  I see people everywhere.  I note the beauty God made in all of us. . . different sizes, shapes, colors, personalities.  Just like the butterflies, we are a vast array of individualized “special.”  We are a people of all different kinds.  It is beautiful.  But many of us are not free yet. Some of us are still tangled in our caterpillar ways. Some of us are waiting for our beautiful.

Was the butterfly always beautiful?

Just as this gorgeous winged arial acrobat once came from a gross and ugly larva, so you and I were once pretty undesirable as we were.  When Christ came into our lives, we were a mess.  We crawled around like a larva doing nothing but eating to feed our own desires.  We wallowed in our own waste, just like the caterpillars on the milkweed leaves in the library bug case.  Think about it.  Sounds kind of gross, but seriously, it all goes in one end and out the other, doesn't it?  Their whole life is a selfish one, consuming what they feel they need to survive and grow.

We are no different. Aren't we?

So if our desires were no different as the hungry caterpillar, still stuck in sin and selfish ways, then what do we actually need to be freed from as people?  The list is almost as endless as the different types of butterflies I once found.  Additions, enslaving sinful lifestyles, old habits, unhealthy attitudes, self-seeking mindsets, impure thoughts.  It can be all labeled as one.  Sin.

But there is great news.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says this: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

When Jesus comes into our lives and we accept Him for who and what He really is, a transformation takes place inside of us that changes us forever.  The old, gross, and undesirable ways of our past are now long gone.  We are forgiven.  The slate that holds the charges against us is wiped clean.  When we accept Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for our sins, accepting the payment for our punishment to be paid in full, it solidifies our standing with God as if no sin had ever even occurred.  In fact, God says in Hebrews 10:17 that He doesn’t even remember our sins anymore.  

In Christ, we can be changed, and that in dramatic fashion.  I know this personally, as my own life has been radically changed.  I am not the man that I was before I got saved.  The “Pre-Jesus” me was a totally and radically different person. Why can I confidently write about how Jesus has made a difference in my life each blog post?  Because it was such a remarkable transformation for the better that it can’t be fully explained.  He has given me life when I held death.  He has set me free when I was bound in sin and chains.  When I was headed for destruction, he gave me wings and set me on a new course.  He changed me.  Held me up in the air with His own nail-scarred hands.  

He set me free.

Let me ask you. . . does anything at all about the adult monarch butterfly even hint a resemblance of the juvenile larva it once was?  Does it carry any of the features of the old life into the new?  Same color?  Same shape?  Same features?  Could the larva fly?  Did it have wing scales?  A tongue designed to sample the sweetness of flowers?  Did it even eat the same diet?

Simply put, Christ knows what He is doing.  He can change a person to the point that there is no real resemblance of the old self any longer.  With His help, you won’t look the same, won’t talk the same, won’t act the same.  You won’t desire the same things to feed yourself.  He can free you from addictions, (the same as the hungry caterpillar’s unsatiable desire for more milkweed), as the adult butterfly has not even an inkling of a thought to try to eat a green leaf.  Jesus can totally transform your life.  The freedom we enjoy when Christ sets us free as new creatures is one never to be returned from.  Old things are forgotten.  We are new creatures.

He did it with me.

Last week in Delmont, nobody was looking in the sky for caterpillars.  Now that I think of it, nobody was even looking for one on the ground.  Not a soul there was inside the library at the screened-in bug hotel looking through leaves for a larva.  Nobody was searching to hold one.  Nobody even had the thought.  Instead, every eye, every child, and every heart were outside embracing the moment of something new.  We were all celebrating the transformation.  We were celebrating the beauty of what had now become.  New creatures.  The old wasn’t even a thought.  We watched the new climb into the sky as a totally free being.

Jesus can and will do the same for you.

I want to enjoy that freedom with you today.

By Chuck Carr

If this message has tugged on your heart and you need help taking the steps to be set free, please email me at Paintwaves7@gmail.com as I would love the chance to help you.

The Delmont Library can be found here: https://www.delmontlibrary.org/