I really hate most bugs. The scene with the bugs in Temple of Doom makes my skin crawl every time. I never liked digging through the dirt and finding worms when I was little. If there’s a bug inside our apartment I usually get Alycia to take care of it.
This disdain for bugs applies to caterpillars. Caterpillars are weird little bugs that are both creepy and furry at the same time. Some people are happy to pull a caterpillar off of a tree and let it slither up and down their hands. I’ve never done that and have had small meltdowns when a caterpillar was near me.
Caterpillars, though, don’t stay caterpillars. They cocoon themselves and turn into butterflies. Like most everybody, I love butterflies. They’re beautiful and graceful; it’s almost impossible to believe that they start as disgusting caterpillars.
But what if a caterpillar didn’t want to become a butterfly?
What if there was a caterpillar that was completely satisfied with its creepy, crawly caterpillar lifestyle. Instead of soaring in the sky on beautiful wings, this caterpillar was content with its life on a stick. Instead of becoming something entirely new and entirely different, it was happy with its old, comfortable life.
Sometimes we’re a lot like a caterpillar that doesn’t want to become a butterfly.
Jesus died on the cross and came back to life so that we could have new life. We’re given the opportunity to live by the Spirit instead of our flesh. 2 Corinthians 5 tells us that when we come to Christ the old is gone and the new has come. Unfortunately, so many of us still hold on to our flesh and our old lives. Like that caterpillar clinging to its stick refusing to become a butterfly, we wallow in our old lives instead of living out our new lives.
It can be scary to leave behind what we know for something unknown. But it’s even scarier thinking about what we could miss out on. Jesus didn’t die so that we’d live lives clinging to sticks. He died so that we could be something entirely new, flying through the sky and experiencing a transformed life.
What helps you be a butterfly?
For someone who doesn't like caterpillars, you sure picked a beauty to illustrate your post! I hear you, though; no fan of bugs myself.
I wish the process of becoming a butterfly were a "once and done" one for us in our emotional and spiritual lives as it for real caterpillars. This continual business of growth transformation Jesus calls us to be about is not much fun, sometimes. By grace alone.