Sometimes a story makes me emotional before I ever understand it completely, before I have dug for its meaning and before I had time to meditate on it to see what God might have to say through it. This one is one of those stories. I have not completely comprehended what it all means and why my throat tightens every time I think of the images. My heart feels as if in a vice when I recall the protagonist of this story, a beautiful Luna Moth.

I have lived in rural Wisconsin for over 20 years and I can only recall having seen a Luna Moth once. It was dead. A friend found it in the road and put it in greasy pizza box. Unlike the Luna Moth’s night-life, mine is nonexistent, and this perhaps explains my lack of run-ins with it. Another reason could be that a Luna Moth has an extremely short life span and only lives for about seven to ten days. When a couple of weeks ago I had two (almost) encounters with a Luna Moth in two days, I paid attention.

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A young co-worker pulled out her cell phone when she entered my office. She was part a group of young people who worked and lived at the conference center where I am employed.

“Look what we saw last night.”

She held up her phone and swiped through several photos of a giant, lime green Luna Moth. To put the size of the creature in perspective, she had picked it up out of the grass and placed it on a green Frisbee. I was awed by its size and the spectacular beauty as I gaped at the photos. The tips of the silky wings looked as if an artist delicately painted two twigs and buds on them. Underneath the top wings, two smaller wings came to a point, as if the moth was trailing a train on a dress. Even in the still picture I could easily imagine those smaller, feathery wings move with the slightest breeze. I was taken aback by the moth’s beauty and admit I felt a tinge bit jealous and wished I had seen it for myself.

I asked my friend to forward the photos to me and tried to be content with the fact that I was at least in the vicinity of a Luna Moth.  

It was a couple of days later while we were outside cleaning around the conference center, when the same co-worker pointed upward.

“Heidi, a Luna Moth. Up there. Can you see it?”

There on the ledge of a large conference room window, a story above us, hung a Luna Moth. Immediately, we all noticed something was not right. The two top, wide leaf-like wings were fine, showing the typical “painted twigs”. We noticed, however, that the entire bottom part, the long, thinly shaped bottom wings were missing. The moth appeared to be stuck to the window screen and may had become a victim to a predator. Now, barely alive, vulnerable and broken, it hung there, its fragile being vibrating to the soundwaves of electrical guitars and drums which were coming through the open window. My throat tightened as I listened to the crowd inside the building sing to the Lord.

This image stirs my soul deeply. I am moved to tears each time I recall the broken Luna Moth.

How frail I am. How easy it is for me to forget that I am feeble, that my life span is not much longer than that of a lily in a meadow, not much more than that of a tender moth in a night-time field. I wonder if the moth knew how beautiful it looked to those who saw it. Do we know how beautiful we are to the Master? Do we know that in Christ we are beautiful to the Father as we bear His image? Do we know how our hearts and our very depth are exposed to Him who judges all things? He knows so well of our broken parts, of all the evil which threatens us, the attacks that leave us broken and try to keep us from our purpose. How fragile is this ground we tread, this tissue thin reality that holds us up. Oh, that God would help us see, worship Him with all we have – broken wings and all.