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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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