October 2024

Greetings!

When I arrived at church last week, two brilliantly-coloured ceramic butterflies greeted me!

They’re fabulous! Brightening our September dulled garden and companioning a nearby commemorative stone butterfly. And, thanks to phone cameras, these china winged-ones were able to bring a blessing to someone in our community. THANK YOU, gifter!

Butterflies are special beings. Their beauty, their extraordinary lifecycle, and their hard work on behalf of flowers and fruits, food and fibre production deserve our admiration and appreciation. And PRESERVATION!

As with other pollinators, butterfly populations have been dramatically reduced by habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change. In the US alone, five different species of butterflies have become extinct since 1950. And, in July 2022, the IUCN, placed the monarch butterfly on its Red List of threatened species.i The entire population – the entire existence - of Danaus plexippus plexippus is under threat.

It would be tragic to lose the monarch or any other butterfly species. And it would tough to adjust to the agricultural impact of widespread pollinator loss. Most terrible of all, species loss (of any sort) injures God.

Australian theologian, Denis Edwards wrote:

“No one creature, not even the human, can image God by itself. Only the diversity of life - huge soaring trees, the community of ants, the flashing colors of the parrot, the beauty of a wildflower, along with the human – can give expression to the radical diversity and otherness of the trinitarian God.”ii

If butterflies are eliminated, God’s image will be diminished proportionally.

Wipe out Joshua trees and there goes the “Joshua tree” bit of God. All creatures – including you and me – are needed to give full expression to God’s goodness and love.

For the psalmist, though, it was the stars and species that take flight who are the Number One proclaimers of God’s glory.

“The heavens keep telling

the wonders of God,

and the skies declare

what God has done.”iii

Let’s keep their voices LOUD!

And multitudinous!

Heavenly blessings to you all,

Brenda

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i Internation Union for Conservation of Nature, PRESS RELEASE 21 JULY, 2022 “Migratory monarch butterfly now Endangered - IUCN Red List”

ii Denis Edwards, “Ecology at the Heart of Faith,” Orbis Books, 2006, p. 78

iii Psalm 19:1 Contemporary English Version