We Are Unique Creatures

 

Good morning!  Again today, as I did last week, I begin this thought acknowledging the current world situation with Ukraine as well as the State of the Union speech by the President and other political and ideological events and situations.  However, Thursday Thought is not a political venue.  It is, rather, a venue for me to reach out to you with what I hope and trust are words of comfort, instruction, reflection, and even information.  I don’t intend to become overly religious in these videos; however, I will not hesitate to point out certain teachings of the Christian faith when appropriate.  It is, of course, your choice whether to view these videos or not.  It is my choice to select the topics.

We are having a warm spell in Kansas this week.  Temperatures are fifteen to twenty degrees above normal.  Such spring-like temps bring out the desire to get outside, dig in the ground, clean up winter’s mess, and even go to the shops and stores that sell seeds & plants, planning the spring and summer planting seasons.

It’s all an illusion, of course.  The warmth is just a tempting ploy to get us to believe that spring maybe has arrived.  The reality is that colder weather is around the corner.  Frosts and freezes are yet to be endured.  Tender buds and shoots may well be frozen back.  And we will go back to wearing layers to keep out the cold, and endure the biting north winds that are sure to come.

The month of March is such a tease.  Days of warmth and breeze are interspersed with days of snow, ice, and gusty north winds.  Plants begin to green up and sprout in the sunny warmth only to be beaten back by several days of below average temperatures and stifling, overcast skies.  March seems to be the month when the battles between summer and winter begin in earnest.  Those battles seem to peak in late April and May with thunderstorms, hail, and even tornadoes criss crossing the plains.

Then, the battle finally having been won by the summer’s heat, June starts the calming down of the weather and July & August are just downright hot.  Late September and October begin the battles again between summer and winter with winter eventually winning out…and then the next March we do it all over again.

There are, we know, parts of this earth that don’t see these battles.  In those areas, it’s either always hot or always cold.  And there are some areas that are always, it seems, just right with very little change in temperatures from summer to winter.  Sometimes we in the temperate climates long to live in a place where the daytime temperatures are always in the upper seventies and the nights are always in the mid sixties.  A place where rainfall is abundant and plant life is rich and full.  However, people who live in those places sometimes long for more of a change.  The sameness of the weather day after day becomes a little too much.  People long for variety, even in the weather, sometimes.

I don’t know what your preference is regarding the weather.  Some like it hot.  Some like it cold. Some like it the same all the time.  Some like the variety.  We are all different.  And that’s my point.  We aren’t all the same.  We aren’t clones.  We each have our preferences and our desires, even when it comes to something we can’t control like the weather.  Those differences don’t mean that some are right and others are wrong.  Those differences don’t mean that we trash and demean those who hold to preferences that we don’t hold.  Nor do those differences mean that we are somehow superior to those who have other points of view.  All it means is that we are not cut from the same mold.  We are unique individuals created by God to fulfill a unique purpose in His creation and in His plans.

May that same God…the God of heaven and earth…the God of, as the Old Testament says, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…the God who inhabited the earth in Jesus Christ…bless you this week as you fulfill that purpose.