The Monarch butterfly's life cycle consists of a series of changes called "metamorphosis."
Life for the Monarch begins as a tiny egg about the size of a sesame seed that has been laid on the underside of a leaf.
Within about four days, the baby caterpillar begins squirming, first, chewing a hole in the side of the egg shell, and finally, emerging into the world.
Just two millimeters long, it's small enough to fit on the head of a pin.
After snacking on its nutrient-rich shell, it takes off in search of its main diet of milkweed leaves.
The young caterpillar is a virtual eating machine, quickly growing over the next couple weeks and shedding its skin several times.
Eventually, it looks for a twig from which to hang. It sheds its caterpillar clothes for the last time and remains motionless for about one and a half weeks in its cocoon.
And there it undergoes a wonderful transformation, slowly forming into the beautiful Monarch butterfly.
The final metamorphosis accomplished, it slowly emerges from the cocoon with its small wings and oversized body.
Over the next half hour or so, fluids are pumped into the wings, expanding them to their full size.
Finally, the Monarch is ready to take to the air, spending its remaining two weeks of life feeding on nectar from flowers and reproducing.
As I pondered the short life cycle of the beautiful Monarch butterfly, I wondered what goes through the mind of the caterpillar besides where its next meal will come from.
In between mouthfuls of leaves, does it notice the honey bees, the birds, the other winged creatures of the air?
And if it does, is there anything within the earthbound worm that wishes it, too, could fly?
Does the caterpillar have any sense of its future, of its potential to capture the imagination of poets, and artists, and preschoolers?
Or does it simply accept life as nothing more than a buffet of one leaf after another, never anticipating its aerial future, never wishing for anything more than another juicy leaf on which to dine?
Fortunately, God seems to have placed within the Monarch a clock which will accept no excuses or responses like, "I've changed my mind,"
"I'm too afraid of what lies ahead," "I'm not good enough," or even "Why should I?"
If any doubts creep into the mind of the lowly caterpillar, they are overridden by nature with its strict demands of obedience to its laws.
Not so with humans. Although we move from one stage of life to another – stages which can be as drastically different as the egg is from the caterpillar,
and as the caterpillar is from the butterfly – although our life consists of many different stages, there's no overriding force of nature that insists we take the next step.
Instead, we human beings have been blessed ... and cursed ... with the gift of choice.
We can choose to remain where we are, accepting our limitations, sometimes even wallowing in them.
Or we can let go of our limitations and embrace the possibilities that God has for us.
We can spend our lives crawling around like the earthbound caterpillar, or we can move to the next stage of life in which we spread our wings and fly.
Abram at 99 years of age and his wife Sarai at 86 years probably imagined they were in the twilight years of their lives.
God had already called them from their homeland of Haran to the unknown land of Canaan. And without so much as the benefit of eighteen-wheelers or a moving company,
they made the 800-mile journey when Abram was a spry 75 years old.
Clearly, God seemed to be setting them up for their retirement years and wouldn't be expecting anything more from them.
After all, how much more mileage could God get from two old people with no more energy left in them than to wake up in the morning,
spoon down a bowl of oatmeal, admire the sunset, and settle in for another peaceful night's sleep.
Little did they know that they were not in their twilight years at all, but were instead, taking a refreshing pause within their cocoons,
being prepared by God to break out and spread their wings as the ancestors of nations of people and the forebears of at least three major world religions.
No, God wasn’t finished with them at all. In fact, God had not even begun to use them to God's greater purpose.
Despite their advanced years and despite Sarai's apparent infertility, maybe even because of their limitations,
God picked out this elderly couple to "be the ancestors of a multitude of nations." It wasn’t too late in life for them to spread their wings and take to the sky.
Sometimes we imagine that God has already accomplished in us whatever we have assumed to have been our destiny.
Like Abram and Sarai, we congratulate ourselves as we approach retirement age with most of our health and senses relatively intact.
We have survived a rat race that has been marked by tears of joy, as well as tears of grief. We have shared the companionship and love of friends, and buried more than we care to remember.
Our life has been filled with both dreams and regrets. We cannot turn back the clock, nor do we wish to do so.
And now our reward is the peace and serenity that comes with watching a beautiful sunset.
And we pray our lives have, in some small way, made a difference in this world, and we hope God's will has been accomplished in our existence.
So what if God said to you, "What are you talking about? I haven’t even begun to use you...yet"?
Or maybe you're not so ready for retirement, because you see yourself working until the day you are laid in your coffin. Maybe life hasn’t been so easy.
Each month, it seems you can barely scrape together enough money to put food on the table and pay the bills. You can't afford to live in a nice neighborhood, so you live in an area noted for its crime rate.
You can't afford good health care, so your health is not as good as it should be or could be. In short, life hasn't been easy.
Like the caterpillar, life seems to be nothing more than looking for where your next meal will come from.
It's almost as if you have been overlooked by God. God has not intervened in your life circumstances, and you don't expect God to do so any time within the near future.
So what if God said, "You're just the right person for what I need accomplished. No one else will do. It's up to you"?
Or maybe neither of these situations is close to yours. Maybe instead, you’ve simply heard messages all your life that emphasize your unworthiness.
And when you hear the same message enough times from enough people, you eventually begin to believe it.
Dirty, shameful, broken, perversion, sinful, mistake. Maybe you've tried to change your life or way of thinking to please others and to please their god.
Or maybe you feel as if you’ve just made too many mistakes in life for God to single you out for a particular mission.
And what if God's message for you was, "I don't make mistakes. I love you and you're the best person to pass that message on to my other children."
Regardless of which stage in life you are, this is my message to you: God's not finished with you, yet.
Don't mistake the caterpillar stage as all there is to life, because God is in the business of transformation.
Don't mistake the cocoon stage as the twilight years, because God is actually preparing you to take to the sky.
Never let your limitations define you. Never let other people's opinion of you define you.
Instead, embrace the destiny to which Go calls you.
When you find the courage to do so, you will discover that the sky is the limit. For with God, all things are possible. Amen.