Sabbath Devotional :: Giver of Good Gifts

One of my most treasured memories from childhood is looking for cocoons and chrysalides with my dad. Every year in the late summer, my family would drive into the west fields of Springville, Utah (or beyond) scouting milk weed plants for caterpillars or already formed chrysalides that we could take home and observe until they became butterflies.

Many a mason jar sat on our kitchen counter for days and even weeks at a time with a small chrysalis dangling from a twig or leaf under many tiny, watchful eyes. To watch the butterflies finally emerge was magical — truly incomparable — an experience I was eager to recreate for my own children someday. So a couple of years ago, when my daughter and I were in Utah during the late summer, my dad and I determined we would make it happen.

Knowing that I would be there for a couple of weeks and that it often took that long for a butterfly to emerge, we immediately set out to find one. Unfortunately, many of our old caterpillar hunting grounds have now been replaced by homes and schools and shopping centers, but we were not about to give up. For the first few days of my trip, as soon as my dad got home from work, we would jump in the car and drive farther and farther away from my childhood home looking for milkweed plants. After a few days, we still had not found any.

Then on a Saturday morning, we all decided to drive to Fairview Lakes to go fishing (another favorite childhood pastime). We had never looked for chrysalides there in my childhood, and the canyon wasn’t a particularly great place for milkweed, but my dad and I were determined to find one and were beginning to worry that we were running out of time for a butterfly to emerge before my daughter and I were to go home to Portland.

My dad knew of one place along the winding canyon road that he thought he had seen milkweed, so we found a safe place to stop the car and look. Before he got out of the car, we decided to pray for help finding one. It wasn’t exactly a matter of critical importance, but all those days of looking unsuccessfully had deepened my heart’s desire. More importantly, I believed it could be an opportunity for my young daughter to experience the power of prayer. With that desire in the forefront of my mind, I offered a prayer specifically crafted for her to be able to understand: “Dear Heavenly Father, please help us find a chrysalis so that Vienna can watch it turn into a butterfly.”

I waited with my daughter and mom in the car while my dad and sister walked a little ways up the road to look. Within only a couple of minutes, they returned, carefully carrying a milkweed leaf with a beautiful chrysalis dangling underneath. We excitedly showed Vienna and were all still talking about our gratitude and amazement through tears and laughter when — to our absolute shock — the butterfly began to emerge from the chrysalis!

For a precious few moments (less than 2 minutes) on the side of a canyon road, with some of us still buckled in our seatbelts, the five of us watched up close as God answered a very simple heartfelt prayer in a small but spectacular way.

To think that God could somehow orchestrate our being in the exact right place in such a very tiny window of time is still almost unbelievable to me. Had I not simplified my prayer for my daughter’s sake, even my most thoughtfully and carefully crafted request for an ideal outcome would have paled in comparison to the blessing God was able to deliver when I didn’t impose my own parameters. God truly is the giver of good gifts. (Matthew 7:7-11)

Last week, while I was pouring out my heart to God about still yet-to-be-answered heartfelt prayers, this experience with the butterfly came to mind and then I read these words from the Book of Mormon: “Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, [sisters], despise not the revelations of God. . . . Wherefore, [sisters], seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. For behold, ye yourselves know that he counseleth in wisdom, and in justice, and in great mercy, over all his works.” (Jacob 4:8,10)

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If you’ve never seen a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis, you should watch this video that was, interestingly enough, recorded today! Monarch Butterflies

And another one! Turning into a chrysalis