On gentle wings of white, yellow, blue, black and other assorted vibrant colors they flutter bringing reminders of God’s love. Never have I been greeted so frequently by the brush of butterfly wings as in Chiang Mai, Thailand where daily they carried on their wings a touch of God’s love and a reminder of His transforming power.
But there is also a counterfeit on those Thailand streets where a “butterfly” is the term for a guy who floats from girl to girl with no commitment. Instead of transforming it brings destruction and with it comes pain instead of beauty.
Sadly these butterflies abound as well.
Going into the bars it was easy to have eyes of compassion for the women stripped of their innocence and broken, but it was much more difficult to see the men such eyes. Nightly I watched them grab at girls while they drank their way into oblivion or listened to them apologize for their absence for a few days due to the inconvenience of a wife and child being in town.
One night standing to the side and seeing the interaction happening in the corner, my mind screamed “Selfish pig!” and fought the urge to “accidentally” guide a ball off the pool table at just the right angle to give him something else to grab (but lucky for him I am just not that good at pool).
From my own viewpoint they seemed like worms parading as the beautiful creatures I love and eating away at the lives of girls I had come to care for. Slowly through the lens of God they became simply men who were lost, lonely, searching and in need of true love as well.
Many sleepless nights gave me time to pray for God’s transforming power in their lives, prayers that “butterfly” would be a prophetic term for the transformation to come.
I have left the land of smiles and butterflies. The bar ministry seems a lifetime away from me now, but the steady flow of customers through the red-light districts continues. Among them are the “butterflies” lost and searching, needing not judgment from man but transformation from God.
