The picture attached to this post is that of a Monarch butterfly. We see them all around us, and what beautiful and delicate creatures they are.
But wait, that is not a Monarch, but a Viceroy butterfly, which mimics the Monarch for defensive reasons. The Monarch feeds on milkweed and is very distasteful to predators, so it is avoided. The mimic is done, then, for safety reasons.
The world, and sadly, the church, is full of Viceroy Christians. They appear lovely on the outside, and look like those around them. Only those who fly with them can tell the difference. But they are there. And, in some perverse way, they have helped make that which they mimic itself distasteful to the world.
Certainly, in the world we now live in, the beauty of the Spirit filled child of God is mimicked, and, like the Monarch, it has become distasteful to the world, and avoided. What a shame it would be if all the Monarchs were killed because they were distasteful. What a cold, stark and unlovely place the garden would become.
And isn’t it ironic that the beauty that we have been sent to bring into the world has become distasteful to the point of death, and that those who mimic us are un-natural only because they remain natural?
But like the Monarch, when the days become short and a chill comes over the garden, we will mount up and fly away forever. Thank you Lord, for the lesson of the butterfly.
2 Cor 11:14b … for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
garythepreacher.com 