Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Heat rolled up from the pavement in shimmering waves, distorting everything across the intersection. We waited at the red light in my practical, mid-size SUV. My husband sat in the passenger seat, his fingers drumming on my knee. 

A butterfly flopped in the middle of the intersection, only getting an inch or two above

ground with each flap before crashing back into the steaming hot pavement. Its wings were heavy and loose, unable to stiffen enough to catch the wind and lift it from the ground. 

“That poor butterfly.” I had the urge to throw my car into park and rush into oncoming traffic to rescue it, but running into one of the busiest streets in town to save a lowly insect, even a beautiful one, wouldn’t have been a smart thing to do. “Do you think it’s injured?” 

“That, or it keeps getting pushed down by the cars rushing past.” Josiah lifted his Red Sox hat from his dark hair and scratched his head while we watched the frantic yellow and black creature. As cars whizzed past, it was blown to and fro in a dizzying tornado. Even if it could take flight, it wouldn’t be able to determine up from down. 

The light flicked to green, and I eased onto the gas, careful to straddle the poor critter as we continued toward our destination. I glanced in the rearview mirror but didn’t see it and silently hoped it managed to flutter to safety.

If I were a better, albeit more foolish, person, I would have scooped the butterfly from the road, cradled it in my palms, and set it on the console in my car where it could cool off in the crisp air conditioning and regain its strength. I would have taken it back to my house in the country and carried it on my shoulder to the wildflowers growing along the cow pasture. With the tip of my finger, I would have set it on an iris bloom and bade it farewell.

But I didn’t do any of those things because it was a butterfly. An incredibly common eastern tiger swallowtail. A lesser creature unworthy of the risk it would take to retrieve and bring it to safety. 

How grateful I am that God does not view me the way I viewed that butterfly—with feelings of pity, sadness, and sorrow, watered down to nonaction.

. . .

I’m an eastern tiger swallowtail, small and insignificant compared to God—the creator and sustainer of all things. Yet he views me, and all of humankind, not as unworthy but as beloved.

It’s hard to visualize a perfect God when his followers are imperfect. When children misbehave, the tendency is to blame their parents for lack of discipline or structure, and we do the same with God. If God is so great and perfect and loving, why are so many of his followers weak and damaged and hateful?

This question can’t be answered in a single essay, or any essay for that matter. How many authors have tried to capture God in words the way one catches a firefly in a jar or a butterfly in a net? He can’t be contained, only observed. Experienced. Adored. 

I’m not asking you to believe in the Christian God or a higher power of any kind. But I invite you to imagine for a moment the kind of being who would throw their car into park and rush into traffic to rescue an ailing butterfly. The kind of being who would defy reason to save a lowly creature incapable of saving itself. The kind of being who has no requirement to do anything but does it anyway out of love, even if it means putting themself in harm's way. 

The God of the Bible is such a being. Over and over again throughout the book, we see examples of God going out of his way to save his people, even if it seems foolish or irresponsible. No story demonstrates this more clearly than that of Jesus Christ dying on the cross.

I choose to believe the God of the Bible is real in part because I want there to be someone who would save that butterfly. Someone who views the smallest creatures with the most tender affection. Someone who ensures birds are fed and fields are clothed—in beauty no less. Someone worthy of emulating.