A Homeless Man and a Butterfly
At our church’s food distribution, two homeless men, Earl and Tony, were waiting outside to receive food. I overheard Earl say to Tony, “There’s your butterfly.” When Tony heard that he smiled a large toothless smile. I said “Oh yeah I saw that butterfly about an hour ago.” Earl told me that their butterfly was different and that this was definitely their butterfly. Tony had seen the butterfly convulsing on the sidewalk being overran by ants. He picked it up very gently, directed the ants to leave the butterfly by herding them, also gently, onto his hand and eventually up his arm. He did this while carefully not touching and removing the very fragile ‘protective powder’, as Tony called it, which is on the butterfly’s wings. He then placed the butterfly on the leaf of a tree in front of the church.
This beautiful but vulnerable insect was once again fluttering in the skies bringing glory to God and joy to His people. This was possible because of a toothless, homeless man’s gentle care which made it even more beautiful to me. Remember that Jesus told us to look at the ravens in the sky and consider the lilies of the field. I wonder how many of us would have even noticed a butterfly struggling for its life against a horde of ants on an urban sidewalk. I wonder how many of us would have stopped our hurried walk to who knows where to reach down and pick it up while getting dirty with dozens of ants crawling all over our hands and arms. I wonder how many of us would have then placed the butterfly on a leaf of a nearby tree and spent 10–15 minutes near that tree to watch the butterfly come fully to life. Probably not many of us because we are talking about dirty sidewalks and insects. For God’s sake our life is too busy and complicated for that stuff. Tony was homeless with nothing else to do. Tell him to forget about the bugs and get a job.
The key phrase in the above paragraph is for God’s sake. That is why Tony did it. Maybe he saw himself in that insect being overran by ants. In his present condition Tony can’t help many people but he could help that insect and he did. Maybe he saw more than an insect but he also saw a beautiful butterfly struggling to fly. And maybe when that butterfly flew a portion of Tony’s soul also soared.
