Every year, far to the south in Mexico, the monarchs begin to stir themselves from their winter sleep, and start to fly north. Each generation of butterfly flies a little further north, breeds, and dies. Their average lifespan is about eight weeks. Slowly, each progressive generation moves north, until they arrive in Ontario in early summer, just as the milkweed plant is beginning to emerge.
Four or five generations live and die. But then the sixth generation hatches.
And these butterflies are different. They don't live and breed and die in eight weeks. Instead, they fly south. Traveling at speeds of about 20 kilometres per hour (on a good day), they will travel distances of up to 80 kilometres a day, for days and days and days, until they have flown nearly 5000 kilometres all the way back to Mexico.
Hundreds upon thousands of butterflies will brave storms and cold, high winds, high wire lines, open stretches of unfriendly water, predators, and starvation as they flutter their way south.
Look closely. The clover is full of butterflies feeding before they tackle the crossing of Lake Erie.
They have no idea where they're going. They just go. And these fifth- or sixth-generation butterflies don't die after eight weeks. They fly all the way to Mexico, live four or five months through the winter, and then, in the spring, start the journey north once again.
The monarchs have always amazed me. Especially the sixth-generation monarchs stir my heart. To do something so amazing. To stand out so remarkably in my generation. To be part of the generation that "takes the land", so to say . . . oh, but that would be wonderful! Every fall, I think about the butterflies, and I wish I could be a sixth-generation butterfly. To do something beyond the standard hatch-eat-breed-die-in-eight-weeks. It sounds so visionary, so victorious, as I stand on the shore and look out over a stretch of wild, open water, with the winds whipping ferociously across the waves, and I realise that if I commit to setting out, away from the safety of the sweet clover on the shore, there will be no turning back, and I am afraid to go. It sounds so grand and glorious, but I'm not sure I have what it takes.
But I realised something this year that I've never really thought about before. Sixth-generation butterflies don't know they're doing anything special. They're simply doing what they're created to do. They are following the call of their Creator to fly south. Day by day, mile by mile, wingbeat by wingbeat, they are simply obedient. Not visionary, not victorious, not grand or glorious, but obedient. And their wonder is seen only because they are obedient to the end. In the ups and downs, in the bright sunshine and sweet clover, in the wide, windblown expanses of the open waters, they are obedient. They have have no idea that they are so amazing. They have no idea that a slip of flying tissue paper has no business flying across the Gulf of Mexico, or across a Great Lake. They have no idea that fragile wings are not up to the task of flying up to 5000 kilometres. They just do it, because God has called them to the task.
But they do do it. They fly. They beat those tissue-paper wings against winds that would blow them off course. They gather in clusters to fight off the cold. They dodge the predators. It's not an easy journey to which God has called them. They have to fight every wingbeat of the way.
But because they struggle inch by inch, because they are such unlikely travelers, because they are obedient, they become a miracle. We are amazed. We watch them, hold our breath, hardly able to imagine that they can survive. They do something hard to imagine, and we admire them.
And maybe that's the answer. Maybe it's not in the visions of grandeur, but in the day-to-day obedience that the miracles happen. Maybe it's in the everyday struggle to remain faithful to the task of that day that God's glory is shown. Maybe the land is taken because unlikely travelers remain faithful to the end to the call of their Creator, despite the opposition thrown against them.
And if that's the case, then maybe I can be a sixth-generation butterfly.
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