The Flight They Were Born to Follow

In 1975, after nearly forty years of searching, scientist Fred Urquhart finally discovered where the Monarch butterflies go. Each autumn, millions of Monarchs leave eastern North America and fly up to three thousand miles to a handful of mountain peaks in Michoacán, Mexico — a place none of them have ever been.

Here is what makes this remarkable: the butterflies that make the journey south are three to four generations removed from the last ones that wintered in Mexico. No parent taught them the route. No scout flew ahead. They simply respond to a signal written into their very being — a combination of the sun's angle, an internal clock, and the Earth's magnetic field — and they go.

They do not understand the science behind their migration. They cannot map the journey or calculate the distance. They simply obey.

And they arrive exactly where they need to be.

There is something here for every one of us who has ever hesitated before a call from God. Obedience does not require full understanding. Abraham did not know where he was going when the Almighty told him to leave Ur. Moses did not know how the sea would part. The disciples did not know what would happen when they dropped their nets.

God does not ask us to understand the route. He asks us to trust the One who wrote it into existence. Like those Monarchs, we were made to follow — and when we do, we find ourselves arriving at destinations more breathtaking than we could have imagined.