When you think of butterflies, what do you think of?
Beauty? Grace?
Butterflies are not only beautiful, they are also very complex, designed to bring more beauty to the world around them. While feeding, they gracefully float back and forth between flowers, pollinating them as they go. Often they don’t just stay on one flower until its nectar has all been drunk, but go from flower to flower, and land on the same flower many times. It almost seems that they care more about pollinating than feeding.
Butterflies are highly specialized. When ready to lay eggs, a female butterfly uses her powerful sense of smell to detect specific species of plants, even from far away. When she has found the plant, she scratches and tastes the plant to ensure that it’s the right one. If she made a mistake here, her offspring would starve; some caterpillars only feed on one plant type.
Consider monarch butterflies. It’s hard to realize how small a monarch’s brain is (I’m talking about butterflies here). Yet the autumn generation of monarch butterflies knows how to prepare for and travel a journey of thousands of kilometers – to a specific place they’ve never been to before. Their delicate wings carry them through clashing weather systems; somehow they find favorable air currents, and often travel faster than their wings alone can propel them. Unaided by aircraft instruments, charts and ground control, they fly from all across southern Canada and the northern United States to specific sites in the mountains of Mexico.
Imagine telling a monarch caterpillar of the journey he needs to make. Imagine pointing him in the right direction, telling him he’ll need to hurry. If he crawls onto the right vehicles, he might still be able to make it. Fortunately, the caterpillar doesn’t take the hint: he finds another milkweed and keeps stuffing his face.
Eventually, he finds a branch and secures himself to it. And there he hangs. Summer is disappearing: he has no time for this siesta! To make the matter worse, he soon sheds his outer skin – and his legs with it. Where’s his hope now?
Just when, you’re ready to completely give up on the lazy caterpillar, the cocoon he’s been snoozing in starts to split open. You watch, skeptical that he’s finally ready to wake up.
To your amazement, a totally different creature emerges, unfolds his wings, assembles his feeding tube, and flutters away.
Maybe you know someone who is headed completely in the wrong direction in life. Maybe, you hope, this person desires to turn his or her life around – live a life that’s beneficial for once. But even if this is the desire, he or she just can’t make it happen. This person looks completely hopeless. Maybe this person is you.
There is hope for this person. This hope is not in trying harder. No matter how hard a caterpillar tries to crawl in the right direction, he’ll never succeed like this. He must become a different creature. It’s the same for every one of us.
There’s a battle in the mind of each person – and it’s a battle that we are too weak to win. Every winner in this battle must become a different creature; though not physically like the caterpillar. We need new hearts, that is, new minds. But how? Is it even possible?
There are many religions, each claiming to offer a solution to this problem. A quick look at world news will make it plain that the majority of these are not doing the job.
The Bible tells us that religious rituals will not solve the problem, that “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.” Galatians 6:15
The good news is that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. ” 2 Corinthians 5:17
God offers each of us the gift of a new mind – a character transformation that will make us into the loving, lovable people that we so desperately need to be. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
Is there anything in your life that’s more important than this transformation? To learn more, check out the Discover Bible Guides Or, to learn why you can even trust the Bible, check out “Is There Anything Left You Can Trust?”