A Swarm of Insects

Twenty-fifth Monday after Pentecost 

Monday is faith journey day on the blog. Nature wonder moments for some of us carry a sense of spirituality. I'm not sure whether this nature wonder moment was spiritual for me at the time. It was more shocking than spiritual.

 

One day in spring, 2009, I left my office at church at N. Wilkesboro a little after 5:00, went across the street to the parsonage, changed into shorts and t-shirt, and drove a mile of so to Reddies River trail for a pleasant, quiet walk. I did this fairly often in the warm weather months. The trail is about a mile and a half along the river bank, meandering the course of the river.

 

The leaves were an April light green. As I moved along the sun reflection on the leaves turned the leaves yellow, a lovely, unusual shade of yellow I had not quite seen on this walk before. I marveled at God's work in nature.

 

As I came around a bend something totally unexpected happened. I was almost instantly swarmed with insects. I mean I was really swarmed with these insects. I was swarmed from head to foot. Even my eyelids were swarmed. I had never expeienced anything like this.

What was my reaction? I loved it. I absolutely loved it. You see, the insects swarming me were the insects we all love--butterflies. In this case they were Tiger-Swallowtail butterflies. Their flapping wings all over my body gave a lightly tickling sensation. 

I brushed them away from my eyes and looked again at the woods. The bright yellow of the leaves of the trees was not the reflection of the sun. It was not even the leaves. It was millions of these butterflies on the leaves. There were so many butterflies that it seemed as if they were a solid mass of bright yellow. I had heard about similar swarms of monarch butterflies at a place in Mexico on the same day every year. 

 

I went home just in time to get the 6:30 news. I told Marianne about it. She agreed to go with me the next afternoon so that she could see them too. We went. No butterflies. All completely gone. I told the story in church the next Sunday. In fact I used it as a sermon illustration. I asked if anyone else had gone on the trail that day. One couple had, but they had gone early in the morning, and thy didn't see any butterflies.

I was the only one.

I am grateful to God for the opportunity to have such a wonderful experience of the nature God created and called us to preserve. It was spiritual.

Faithfully,

Christian