By DANNY MINTON

“The Blue Butterfly” is probably one of those movies where you keep scrolling down the menu after seeing the title. It’s not an exciting movie, with few action scenes and no violence.

But it is a love story. It’s the story of a mother who wants her ten-year-old terminally ill son to be able to travel to the rainforest to capture a rare blue butterfly. He has heard an entomologist say that holding the blue butterfly unravels the mysteries of the universe.

The young man is determined to capture the butterfly before dying of a brain tumor. He is obsessed with obtaining this one specific butterfly. Along the way, he meets a young girl who questions why he wants to find this butterfly so badly. After his explanation, he tells her that “the blue butterfly” is everything. She tries to convince him to look around and see all the things he is missing by focusing on one single insect. He is in the middle of one of the most beautiful places on the earth where life and color abound, but he is passing it all by with little interest.

Then one day, he opens his eyes and notices a scarab. He realizes that there are things in this world more important than the elusive blue butterfly. There are people who care, and there are unnoticed mysteries that come to life. He realizes how trapped he finds himself in his isolated world.

When he finally obtains the blue butterfly, he sits outside on a bench, opens the cage, removes the butterfly, and sets him free. He tells the butterfly instead of being trapped like him, it will live in freedom.

Unfortunately, that’s the way a lot of us are today. We find ourselves trapped in worlds headed in the wrong direction. We may be obsessed with making money, climbing the corporate ladder, or some personal goal that takes up our entire life. We become so entangled in our obsession that we fail to see the world around us. We let life go by in a desire to reach a goal that ultimately gives little satisfaction. At some point in our life, we realize where we’ve headed and the emptiness it holds. When we reach this point, we long to be free from a world in which we find ourselves entrapped.

Jesus had the answer when he said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and then all these things will be given to you.” In simple terms, to be free from our traps in this world, we must be obsessed with seeking God’s world.

By the way, the movie is based on a true story. When the young boy returns home, his tumor has gone, and he finds himself set free from his illness to live a long life. Our freedom from the traps of life can discover true release when we seek the One who has the power to set us free. 

Danny Minton is an Elder at Southern Hills Church of Christ