Wonderfully Different

I'm amazed when I remember
who it was that built this house.

The late Rich Mullins pondered God's creation and he was amazed.  He sang of winter streams, nesting wrens, silver moons, and falling rains.  His words, from his song "The Color Green," remind me to revel in the handiwork of God. 

My wife, children, and I feel quite blessed to call Alaska home.  We love this place.  One major reason for this love for our state is its beauty.  On Father's Day we went on a family hike.  We ventured on the Reed Lakes Trail.  As we climbed hills, conquered boulders, and crossed mountain streams, we took in the beauty - a sort of "stopping to smell the roses."  I do not tire of such delightful sites. 

While, due to sin (ours and others), we live in a Genesis 3 world, we recall the poetic rendering of the creation stories found in the first two chapters of that great book of beginnings.  God created the heavens and the earth, crafting a great display of His power; but not power alone.  He also revealed His creativity through variety.  Snowflakes are not the only things in nature that have no match.  All of creation, including you and me, are in a word . . . Different. 

Part of living your everyday life in an Ordinary way is to recognize your differences.  Yet recognition alone fails to complete the process.  We do well when we add to recognition, acceptance.  Accept, indeed embrace, your differences.  Use your differences as you live your everyday life for Christ.  Borrowing the words of the recorded voice of the Mission Impossible commander, "Your mission, should you choose to accept it" is to ask yourself the following questions:

• What makes you different?
• How well do you embrace those differences?
• What's stopping you from fully embracing your differences?
• How can God use you because of your differences?

13 For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
Psalm 139:13-14 (NIV)