CATERPILLARS, BUTTERFLIES, OR BOND SERVANTS

Each year about this time caterpillars descend with a vengeance to devour my purple passion vines. They gobble leaves, stems, buds and blossoms and with a full tummy spin themselves into cocoons to await their metamorphosis into butterflies.

My yard has a zippety-do-da kinda feeling today. Splashes of orange, white, and black dance over my zinnias and roses, doing loopedy-looping circles of joy exhibiting their exuberant freedom.

But do butterflies accomplish anything other than transmitting pollen and giving us a serendipity moment? Their transformation from worm to wonderful speaks to us about the transformation God longs to perform in our lives when we surrender to Christ and commit ourselves as bond-slaves to Him.

Other than fly and pollinate—what? What do butterflies do?

They’re pretty. Their flight patterns are exhilarating. They’re always hanging around beautiful flowers. But in essence, they are lightweights in God’s economy. This one wasn’t strong enough to overcome the prison of its confinement. They are creative miracles of life and laughter, but not longevity.

I wonder if God’s people are prone to concentrate on the lightweight, pretty part of living? Patterning ourselves to flitting around pretty people, picturesque piddling toward worship, and reciting presumptuous platitudes.

Yet not being truly transformed.

God has not called us to flutter along the breezes of life. He has called us to be bond-servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. Bond-servants whose purpose is to do the master’s bidding. Nothing more—nothing less. It’s a full-time, life-time job.

Images from Iraq this week have shown people in 2014 dying for their faith in God. Yet, I’ve read comments on FaceBook today from folks who refuse to look at these gruesome horrors. We don’t want to be confronted with the actuality of mothers throwing their babies off a mountain to die, rather than having them live to endure the torture that is certain to come at the hands of evil. We don’t want to see children beheaded. We don’t want to see the reality of the ugliness of life on a planet where the Prince of the Power of the Air rules.

Why?

We’ve grown so accustomed to pretty, clean, and easy we would do anything, serve anyone, even deny the Lord Jesus in order to maintain vanishing beauty, cover up our white-washed hearts, and disguise the lukewarmness of our faith.

Jesus said, “Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations on account of My name. And at that time many will fall away and will deliver up one another and hate one another” (Matthew 24:9-10 NAS).

He instructed us to stand firm in the faith ‘til He comes and said, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24 NAS).

If we choose to live our few years as butterfly Christians doesn’t that make us those folks He refers to in Revelations? Christ said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth” (Revelation 3:15-16 NAS).

But you say, “I live in the USA. What can I do to help people in Syria, Iraq, and other places around the globe? The answer is simple. If we don’t stop them there, they will soon be among us. Then how will you stop them?

First of all, pray diligently. Not just an adult rendition of “now I lay me down to sleep,” before you collapse comatose on your cushy Sleep Number. Brothers and sisters in Christ are being slaughtered. How will you justify your actions and reactions to those saints and to their Lord in that day?

Write, call, email your congressional representative to demand our government ceases to lag behind the curve. Ceases to send multiplied millions of our tax dollars to countries who persecute, torture, and kill Christians. And ceases to do business with nations who perpetrate violence against its own citizens.

Deprive yourself—of meals out, Starbucks, entertainment so you can contribute to organizations like Samaritan’s Purse. Organizations with boots on the ground relieving physical pain. Organizations who teach the truths of the Word of God—bond servants for the cause of Christ.

Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:40 NAS).

So, dear one, are you a caterpillar, a butterfly, or a bond-servant. Your actions and reactions count for eternity.