School Field Trip

if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! – 2 Corinthians 5:17

Spring is a becoming time. Sure proof that winter wasn’t a deathly, but a waiting time. Spring can’t be contained and it bursts forth new. An expected surprise every year bringing blooms and . . . butterflies!

Butterflies have long been a favorite. Their change a hopeful promise. Message that sins and mistakes don’t define us, the crazy little caterpillar can grow wings. Always a favorite, a metaphor I had clung to but I never experienced the little miracle . . . till my boys. Bringing home caterpillars and cocoons, wide eyed to see their transformation. It never gets old to watch and wait and see the impossible happen!

So of course when their aahhmazing! charter school was having a field trip to The Monarch Program we were so THERE. Hidden amidst overgrown backyards overlooking the Pacific, a little garden filled with butterflies, caterpillars and cocoons, to gently hold and learn.

The children understand the magic. They inherently know this is our story, our one greatest need to be transformed. The world whispering its possibility over and over. We study the infinite ways as we explore. Another field trip to witness galaxies far flung, a satellite giving us glimpses to the edges of time. Volcanoes, oceans, little shoots of growing green, octopuses and polar bears, pyramids and our incredibly engineered bodies all give us a bit of a peek. But is there anything so blatantly creative? So full of the salvation our dark days and mundane failures cry out for?

Praise God for little bits of flapping color birthed impossibly from unlikely blobs. Thank God for children’s hands to hold them and remind us of their wonder!