Beauty and Brokeness

As River and I have been walking around Hinckley, I have been enjoying the Monarch Butterflies. We always seem to have one that flutters in and out of our path. This one day, River decided to stop and smell and the butterfly landed on the bush right above her. I had been watching the butterfly and thinking about how beautiful it was. I was enjoying it flying around us. 

Then it landed there above River and I noticed how broken the butterfly was. There were holes in its one wing and the beautiful orange color when you got up close was faded and worn. As soon as I noticed how faded the butterfly was, as soon as I saw how it was damaged and flawed. I stopped seeing its beauty. I only saw its flaws and faults. I no longer could experience the joy and wonder for I was think about how the monarch was near the end of its life. I saw the butterfly’s death rather than its life. 

How do we respond when we encounter the broken, the flawed? When we learn that someone is ill, seriously ill, do we only see their illness and forget the person there are who laughs with us, who has always been there when needed, who know when its time to get away? Do we stop seeing their beauty? Or when we discover a person that we like, who makes us laugh and has always been kind to us, holds political opinions that we find so antithetical to our own beliefs that we have trouble seeing the good in them. Yet, we as followers of Jesus are invited to see the beauty in brokenness, to love those people we hate, to bless those who have been beaten up by life. We are reminded again and again of the Jesus who didn’t see the man who couldn’t walk but saw a man who needed forgiveness, the woman ill for years who was blessed for her faith, the lepers who were brought back to wholeness, the blind and deaf who could see and hear, the woman who was invited to drink the water. Jesus saw the beauty in the brokenness and brought out its light. Jesus wants us to move closer to the broken butterfly and experience its beauty.