Asking God to Show Us What Is Really Important

Today I heard a fluttering sound and found a beautiful butterfly trapped between the blinds and the window in our bedroom. The blinds are attached to the window so I couldn’t draw them up. I opened them and let the butterfly fly into the room but it went straight back again because it saw the daylight outside the window and wanted to get there.

It would just keep fluttering its wings, trying to fly through the window glass. I opened the window but it only opens at the top so the opening was a long way away from the poor butterfly.

Then I got some paper and tried to guide it to the edge of the window where the opening was. But everytime the butterfly would stop and go back when it got to the window frame because it was trying to reach the daylight!

So I scratched my head and thought for a bit, and decided that the only way I was going to be able to get that butterfly outside was if I held it in my hands so it couldn’t escape, because otherwise I’d never get it past the window frame.

I’m not a huge fan of holding wriggling things, but I felt sorry for it so went for it anyway, and as soon as I got it to the window opening I opened my hands and away it went, free into the air outside.

I realised that we can be like that butterfly where we see the light and we see where we want to go, but we’re fluttering wildly and not able to get there. But God can very easily guide us with His hands and show us the way that we can’t find by ourselves.

I was thinking about it today as I struggled with my usual overwhelming amount of things I wanted to do and not enough time to do them in. I knelt down to pray after I had put the children in bed, and prayed in desperation, ‘How do I get all this done?’ – things like exercise that I really didn’t have the energy for, a shower that I didn’t have the energy for either, and so on!

But then I felt like God showing me that other people might be telling me I need to do these things, but they aren’t actually what I really need to do. I would love to be all toned and not have flab, but at the same time is it really that important right now to get that way?! And of course I’m not saying that it’s unimportant to exercise – just that in relation to the other things I had to do it wasn’t as high a priority.

So I filtered it down to what I really needed to do, and in fact I ended up exercising in a different way as I went downstairs and realised the floors needed sweeping and that was something I should be doing!

I think when we feel overwhelmed we need to realise that God won’t ask us to do more than we can do – so maybe we’re asking too much of ourselves. Maybe we need to pray and ask for God to guide us like that butterfly out into the light, to show us what is really important.

Part of ‘What God is Teaching Me’ on Saturdays

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