For all in the Christian faith this week holds one of the most important events of remembrance for them. It is Easter week. According to the Bible the Lord Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people in the city came out to praised him and said ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest’. Sadly, within a week on Easter Friday Jesus was taken, tried and crucified. The same people who just a few days before were praising him were now chanting crucify him, crucify him. Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross. It looked like his enemies had won, but really his death was the climax of his success. What man thought was the end God saw as the glorious beginning.
This reminds me of the life cycle of a butterfly which undergoes a complete metamorphosis. The winged adult female butterfly lays many small eggs on plant leaves. These plants will then become the food for the hatching caterpillars or larva stage, where the purpose of the caterpillar is to eat and grow up to 100 times their size. For example, a monarch butterfly egg is the size of a pinhead and the caterpillar that hatches from this tiny egg isn’t much bigger. But it will grow up to 2 inches long in several weeks. They will grow and split and shed their skin about 4 or 5 times throughout this period. Food eaten at this time is stored and used later as an adult. When the caterpillar is fully grown and stops eating, it becomes a pupa. The pupa of butterflies is also called a chrysalis. Depending on the species, the pupa may be suspended under a branch, hidden in leaves or buried underground. The pupa stage can last from a few weeks, a month or even longer even up to two years. It may look like nothing is going on in the chrysalis but big changes are happening inside. Special cells that were present in the larva are now growing rapidly. They will become the legs, wings, eyes and other parts of the adult butterfly. Many of the original larva cells will provide energy for these growing adult cells. When metamorphosis is complete, the pupal skin splits, the adult insect climbs out, and after its wings have expanded and dried, it flies off. What is the end of the caterpillar, is the beginning of the butterfly. What some see as the finish, the creator God sees as the beginning. The butterfly could not hatch out, if it had not previously gone through the three earlier stages. They were all necessary to produce the glorious final stage. This is like Christ Jesus he had to take on human flesh and be born in this world. He had to live a holy and sinless life. Moreover, he had to suffer and be crucified before he could be resurrected on the third day. The death on the cross lead way to the rising from the dead. The resurrection demonstrates that he had won the victory over death, sin and the devil and as the first to rise from the dead he would fulfill the promise and brings others with him. In the gospel of John 11 verse 25,26 we have one of the greatest statements of faith “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” Do you believe it? Christ is Risen! – Truly He is Risen!
