The Butterfly Conservation Organisation AGM - a good day out.

I hadn't realised how much trouble the Wood White butterfly was in until I heard the first talk at our Butterfly Conservation Organisation AGM this year.    But it is being helped - its numbers are on the rise again.   Though  I imagine the contrast with a century ago, where I expect they filled the woodlands.  They are a fairytale butterfly. I first saw them - or knowingly saw them (have to admit that all white butterflies were "cabbage whites" to me, for many years) - in Oaken Wood, when the Captain and I spent a day there some years ago. They flutter round the Rides, which is why it is so important they are maintained.   Once they are overgrown, the butterflies disappear.

What Butterfly Conservation has also found out is how important it is the full Ride is maintained. The ditches at the side have turned out to be very important.

When we try to help butterflies, which has to be based on getting to know more and more about them, and try to get things right for them, we get things right for other species too. And we also help ourselves. The City of Brighton and Hove got an award for its sterling work in the butterfly arena and the gentleman who accepted the award mentioned the friendships that had grown up among the group toiling away at the Butterfly coalface.

Everything is part of that perfect whole that existed in the beginning - that perfect balance. We cannot restore that harmony - that time when nature was not "red in tooth and claw". But in trying to, we are at least caring for the earth, as we were made to do.

And Jehovah will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth".  He will restore Paradise.  We need to remember that.   Because the moth and butterfly world is in deep trouble. And isn't it the same story for everything, worldwide?

What is the force driving this destruction?   The Inspired Scriptures clearly identify it, or rather him, as Satan the devil, "the original serpent".   The Watchtower magazine you are being offered at your doors this month is trying to alert people to this, in a forceful cover article.

We need the rescue Jesus taught us to pray for when he left us the Lord's prayer.

In the meantime, us at the Butterfly AGM experienced yet another extinction.  As we queued up in the sandwich bar for our lunch, we watched the pile of sandwiches dwindle and fail to replenish itself and half the queue was left facing a sandwich bar that had run out of sandwiches.

The young staff took a definite "Let them eat cake" stance.  (They had not run out of cake, to be fair.)  And it was left to the staff of Butterfly HQ to fly to our rescue and rush to the nearest M & S, where they conserve their sandwiches rather better.

Alan Sugar would have been in despair.   I suppose it wasn't one of those Apprentice tasks for the next series?

Overall, it was a very good day out.  And, as always, I learned a lot.  It reminded me that there is so much to learn, so much to know.  It reminded me that we are surrounded by miracles in plain sight: egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly.   And it reminded me that I want to "inherit the earth", to live on it forever, helping to care for it, always learning about the Grand Creator.  I want to be here when the woods are full of Wood Whites again.

So thanks to all who organised, worked hard, and spoke; thanks for the amazing 3-D presentation taking us right into the caterpillar/butterfly world; and thanks to those who toiled all year to help the butterfly and moth creation.

And thanks above all to the Grand Creator himself, Jehovah, the God of Abraham.