The monarch nursery has taken a turn for the disturbing. It seems that a mean old fly (it even has evil looking red eyes) called a "tachinid fly" likes to hunt down innocent caterpillars and inject its nasty little eggs into the caterpillar's body. The eggs hatch and feed on the caterpillar's insides. No one, apparently not even the caterpillar knows this has happened until the about the time the caterpillar gets to the chrysalis stage. Then, and this is the especially heartbreaking twist that is like that fly giving your hopeful kids the middle finger, right after everyone gets excited about the caterpillar being on its way to becoming a butterfly, Something Bad happens.
Someone walks by the insect cage and notices The Something: A white string appears from the hanging caterpillar (in the chrysalis or just hanging upside down). Weird, huh? Oh well, all is probably well.
Then you notice that a little something has used the string to exit the beautiful green chrysalis (or in some cases it can be the dangling, sleeping caterpillar).
It's a maggot. Yep. A MAGGOT.
A maggot that has just dashed the family's hopes of seeing a monarch butterfly emerge from the chrysalis in a few weeks.
Now here comes the sound of wailing children.
But wait! Teachable moment here!
The Lord impressed upon me that is the bug version of the parable of the sower (found in Matthew 13). Because only about five out of five hundred caterpillar eggs that are laid live to become a butterfly. There are just so many ways that a fragile little caterpillar can be killed: snatched away by a spider, poisoned, infected with a parasitic maggot, infected with fungus, squashed by a person traipsing thru a field, etc.
People are like the caterpillars. Many are snatched away by unbelief, false teaching, love of self/money/various idols,etc. They think they are fine, just like those infected caterpillars. And for many of them, by the time they realize they are not fine, it is too late (death). Jesus wasn't kidding when he said that "But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:14).
We have 10 chrysalises hanging right now; we started out with 25 caterpillars. It remains to be seen how many will emerge as beautifully transformed butterflies. My constant prayer is that 100% of my own little caterpillars (kiddos) will become butterflies.
3 comments:
There is some great wisdom in taking maggot infested caterpillars and making their story into a postive, teachable moment. Love that! You rock. I love this scripture you mentioned too!
Great insight, and wisdom Wendy.
I am thankful when our Father shows us the connection of our walk with Jesus and the renewed life we have when we step into serving our Savior; we are transformed and the old passes away. As we continually seek him the transformation becomes truly beautiful!
What a blessing we were able to see first hand the incredible journey of the metamorphis from catepillar to butterfly!
Always looking for a way to point them kiddos to God :) Amazing how He brings those analogies to mind when you ask, haha!
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