Realm of the Butterfly

The other day my boys and I found a caterpillar crawling in the backyard. The thing about caterpillars is that they are really slow and they can't see very well so they will crawl right up into your hand. The boys were looking at it up close and passing it back and forth. In the midst of all the commotion they dropped it and one of them accidentally stepped on it. Whoops.
 
I explained that there would be one less butterfly in our yard this year which led to further chats about the life of caterpillars. You know, one of those father-son teaching moments where we try to explain complex processes in kid terms as if we really understood it in the first place. I felt like Clark Griswold talking with Rusty about exterior illumination.

It really is pretty cool though - how caterpillars transform into butterflies. I think the technical term is metamorphosis. It got me thinking about the gospel which basically says the same thing happens to us when we're born again. We are literally born again into new creations, just like caterpillars becoming butterflies.

But there's no butterfly without the cocoon experience. There is no life without first dying. Early on I struggled a lot in my Christian walk because of this - I never completely died. I never crawled into the cocoon. I never "took up my cross". See, if we try to get born again without first dying we will end up in perpetual labor. Stuck in the birth canal. Trust me. Straddling the fence never ends well. He who wants to save his life MUST lose it. I looked for other ways but there wasn't any.

When we finally get to the point where we understand the cocoon experience is the only pathway to life, we crawl in - sometimes even without fully understanding what the cocoon will do to us. But we do it - either by process of elimination or sometimes through the help & encouragement of others.

But I think we often focus too much on the cocoon - as if the cocoon is the entire point of the Christian life. Death. We come to the end of ourselves, repent of our sins and crawl into the cocoon never to be seen again. But forgiveness is not the point of the gospel. The point of the gospel is the new creation. A new heart. Wholeness. Freedom. The restoration of that which was lost. It's as if we never ate from the tree in the garden. We are forgiven SO THAT we can walk in freedom and "newness of life" as ambassadors of a new kingdom - a kingdom not on the ground of the caterpillar with its poor eyesight and dulled senses, but a new kingdom in the realm of the butterfly - the new creation - looking down on our circumstances because we are "seated with Christ in heavenly places" (Eph. 2:6).

See, Jesus didn't just die for our forgiveness. Forgiveness is awesome but there is so much more than the cocoon experience. The rest of the good news is that you enter the cocoon as a caterpillar - and you leave as a butterfly. You are no longer a slave to the ground but free as the wind. There is only one catch: in the kingdom of the butterfly you can only use your wings when you actually believe you have them. Just like the butterfly as it emerges from its cocoon, we cannot see our wings - the new creation - with our natural eyes. At first, we only know we have been changed because of the words of the first Butterfly who went before us. We can't see our wings so we must believe His words instead of our eyes. It's only after taking the leap from our cocoons that we gain the revelation of who we have actually become.

There are two kinds of Christians out there - those who take this leap and those who don't. For those who don't, they crawl back in the cocoon and wait for the first Butterfly to come back with more detailed instructions. For those who do, well, they are out playing and making more cocoons.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." - Heb. 11:1