Chasing Butterflies

Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort - Mobile, AL

Clifton Fadiman, in The Little, Brown Book Of Anecdotes, tells a story about Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who achieved popular success with his novels Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962), and Ada (1969). One summer in the 1940s, Nabokov and his family stayed with James Laughlin at Alta , Utah , where Nabokov took the opportunity to enlarge his collection of butterflies and moths. Fadiman relates: “Nabokov’s fiction has never been praised for its compassion; he was single-minded if nothing else. One evening at dusk he returned from his day’s excursion saying that during hot pursuit near Bear Gulch, he had heard someone groaning most piteously down by the stream.“

‘Did you stop?’ Laughlin asked him. Nabokov replied, ‘No, I had to get the butterfly.’

The next day the corpse of an aged prospector was discovered in what has been renamed, in Nabokov’s honor, ‘Dead Man’s Gulch.’” *

Chasing butterflies while a man lay dying.  How terrible! Yet, are WE not guilty of many similar – and often shameful – pursuits? 

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) once said, "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known by Jesus Christ." Yet, many times we try to fill that void with something else – a career, a hobby, a relationship – or chasing butterflies!

But God did not create a world in which He is not necessary -  It is His design that each of us be restless (as Augustine stated it) until we find our rest in Him.  It is His will that we “should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28).

God, our Creator, wants nothing more than for us to become His children by right of redemption -  He has made this possible through the gift of His Son, who paid the price for our sins by dying on the cross (Ephesians 1:7).  Because of Jesus, we can be born into the family of God!  

To be born again, we must: place our faith in Christ (Acts 16:30-31), turn from our sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and be baptized (immersed) in the name of Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38; 22:16).  Then, as His children... we must continue to walk in the light of His Word, so that the blood of Jesus can continue to cleanse us from sin (1 John 1:7).

Let’s STOP chasing butterflies and START focusing on what truly satisfies and wholly saves: a relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

God bless you!

David A. Sargent, Minister 

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

* Vernon Grounds

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