The wings of a butterfly
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We are all desperate infidels in heart! Though all through the word of God we see His providence shine forth in the minutest events, though the Lord Himself tells us that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, and that a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God's providence or permission—yet to believe that He is everywhere so present, and that He everywhere so directly lives, moves, and acts as to regulate and control the minutest circumstances of daily life—all this so surpasses all our natural credence that nothing can enable us to believe it but the faith of God's own giving and maintaining—and having had ourselves some personal experience of it, so as to set our own seal to its reality and truth.
Most have noticed the wings of a butterfly, and observed the uniformity and beauty of the pattern. Now to produce that beautiful uniformity of pattern, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of little feathers must combine.
And were we to have to calculate the exact shape, situation, and tint of marking which every single plume of this countless feather-dust must have, to prevent the whole being a confused blotch, it would exceed all the powers of human mathematics, not to say all the faculties of the human mind! But we might as well believe that a group of boys, by throwing together stone after stone for a number of years, could build up a Westminster Palace—as that all these minute feathers came together by chance!
Now if in 'creation,' and this is but one instance out of a million, we are obliged to recognize a divine hand in so minute a circumstance as the marking of a butterfly's wing, why should we not see the same hand in the minutest events of 'providence' also? The grand difficulty is to see God at all—anywhere or in anything. If once by faith we see Him who is invisible, and feel the presence of a God at hand and not afar off, all other difficulties vanish! Be it our happy portion to be ever watching the hand of God in providence and grace, and surely we shall watch for neither in vain!
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