Sid and I recently took an RV trip to Canada’s Campobello Island, FDR’s summer home. It’s a great place to explore and see new things.

One morning as we were eating breakfast and admiring the view, a very small butterfly landed on the window screen. I love butterflies so I took the opportunity to take a picture. This is what it looked like:

I was shocked!! This was not at all what I saw through my camera! The little critter on the screen was tiny, some local variety. I was fascinated with this optical illusion so I continued to take picture after picture of this weird effect of a giant butterfly on the window screen. But at some point the picture changed to this:

Can you even find the tiny butterfly? Look hard to the right in the middle and you can barely see it! The trees look about the same focus but the butterfly’s proportions are drastically changed.

So my logical mind began the analysis: clearly the IPhone camera’s lens was focussing on the butterfly in the first pictures as a close-up and the lens was reacting differently for the rest. But it really didn’t seem that was the case since the birch trees in the center seemed about the same focus in all of the pictures.

Then my eyes were opened to what HaShem was telling me as I shot the video below. (The background sound is Sid opening his Father’s Day present :

 Link to YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/JjAH_riF6K8

All the small butterfly was doing was opening and closing its wings while perched on the window. Yet the illusion of its massive wings flying through the forest was captured in this video.

Butterflies are like the blessings in our lives. They randomly alight, little unexpected treasures of beauty bringing reminders of HaShem’s presence, His ethereal nature just beyond our reach, flitting in and out but always around even when unseen. Looking out the window the butterfly was beautiful but so small in relation to the surrounding forest. Yet when I stopped to appreciate the little creature’s intricacies, it literally grew right before my eyes. HaShem showed me that through the range of photos taken with really no change on my part other than clicking the camera button. He revealed the truth that our blessings are huge, really, even when we think them small in relation to the world around us. When we focus on the blessings, life is not only beautiful, it reminds us of the mystery of His presence.

As the video reveals, when we journey through life with an appreciation for the magnitude of His blessings, the uncertainties of the forest as the uncertainties of our lives dwarf by comparison, for we travel on His wings.

Shabbat shalom.

Diane