My Monarch Retirement

by Brooks Hartzell

I always have a slideshow of personal photos running on my computer. Yesterday, the photo taken during last year’s extreme monarch butterfly migration near Columbus really caught my eye. I LOVE monarchs! So I dodged off to File Explorer to see what other photos I may have from then. I had my photos arranged in date order and noticed that the butterfly photos were right next to my retirement party photos. When this happened last year, I never put together any connection between those two events. But now it really struck me that those 2 things were happening on the same day!

I know that this wouldn’t mean much to most people. But to me, it seemed more than coincidence because monarchs are such a picture of glorious end of life transition. After all, they spend their early lives as big, creepy green caterpillars eating weeds! But at the end of their life cycle when they seem to die and dissolve into lifeless goo inside a capsule (a pointless ending to a pointless life), they emerge for just a few weeks miraculously transformed into these glorious, winged beings that fly thousands of miles for a spectacular final celebration of life!

It’s hard to miss the parallel to resurrection and glorification! And for Heavenly Father to underline my own personal end of life transition beginning with retirement just seems absurdly gracious, unnecessary, even though highly appreciated!

What a loving Heavenly Father we have! How often does He punctuate our lives with affirmations and messages like this that we’re usually too dull to catch at the time? I think it’s sort of His way of planting little surprises for us to find along the way, kind of a little wink with a twinkle in His eye telling us how much HE REALLY, REALLY LOVES US!!!

[2Co 4:16-18 NKJV]

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward [man] is being renewed day by day.

17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding [and] eternal weight of glory,

18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen [are] temporary, but the things which are not seen.