I saw a butterfly busying itself with the sort of things butterflies do: collecting, feeding, laying eggs and spreading out its wings before the sun; it was unconscious of its own beauty.
This butterfly was an unusual one. Most butterflies fly from bush to bush, or from flower to flower and usually stay fairly near the ground. This butterfly flew higher and higher, exploring the sky. Strangely, however, I noticed that the higher in the sky it climbed, the nearer to the earth it also flew. This was a paradox! And so it is with us: The closer in heart we get to God and the more in touch with Him we get, the more we explore His spiritual realm, the closer to earth we become in the sense of finding His love and His heart for humanity and for the individuals we are called to share this planet with.
One of my favourite authors is John Stott; I’m indebted to him in many ways. Certainly, as a Christian writer and thinker, he was not in favour of a life of abandonment but involvement. He wrote the church should be ‘like a rock in a mountain stream, like a rose blooming in mid-winter, like a lily growing in a manure heap.’ (The Contemporary Christian.’)
‘Nearer to God’, may we be
… but never abandon humanity ...
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