Views from the Pews – Sunday, November 10, 2024 – Proper 27
I share with you an Inspirational Story sent to me by electronic mail. A story entitled “The Monarch Butterflies”
My 29 year old son Kevin passed away in August of 1996 from a brain tumor. The brain tumor caused him to have a small stroke. He was living and working in Washington D.C. at the time, and I immediately sought a leave of absence and flew there from my home in St. Louis.
When I got to see Kevin, he was distraught and wanted to know why he should go on living. I responded that only God knows when it is time for us to leave this earth, and that I would be there for him through his illness.
I set about moving his things, going to the grocery store each day to get boxes, then packing them and sending them via UPS to my home. We both wondered when and how his furniture could be moved. But a good friend of his-a young lawyer was living in D.C. at the same time and miraculously was getting ready to move to St. Louis. He offered to place Kevin’s furniture on his moving truck and send it to my apartment. God had heard our prayers.
Once Kevin was back home, we started looking for doctors, and found a fantastic radiologist. Between the doctors help and a strict nutritional plan, he was soon walking with the help of a cane. His good spirits came back, and he was able to drive his beloved jeep.
Kevin was always a kind happy child and a committed Christian. At one time he even thought of becoming a preacher. Eventually he paid his own way through college(we were fairly poor when he was growing up) and became a pharmacist. As a pharmacist he worked for a program that helped pharmacies pay for prescriptions for those who could not afford them.. That’s just the kind of person he was.
His good health lasted until July 1996, but after his 29th birthday, it declined rapidly. When Kevin died I was devastated, and each day was a struggle for me, whether I was at work or home. Two of my friends were working on a project to increase the world’s butterfly population. They had given me some Monarch butterfly caterpillars as part of this project. Gloria told me what to feed them, which I dutifully went about doing. It was a distraction from my grief.
One particular day in October of 1996, I was more distraught than usual, and I too had even considered suicide. Angry and depressed, I was sitting in my kitchen, crying when I heard a small sound. There on the shelf, inside the glass bottle that held the caterpillars, I saw the cocoons begin to open. The beautiful Monarchs started unfolding before me. My heart was filled with joy as I realized what God was showing me: that even though we die in this human life, we are reborn like butterflies to an infinitely more beautiful state. Our bodies simply encase this beauty. Our souls are set free upon death to the wonder of heaven – if we simply believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and His promise of life everlasting. Although I was still sad after this event, I was at peace with God’s promise of everlasting life through the lesson of the Monarch butterflies.