11/12/08
Most of the time when I am trying to be observant I find myself looking ahead or around, I’m not one to look down very often but on my walk today I found myself glancing down for some reason or other and suddenly I had to do a side step, it was that or step on a beetle. It’s amazing how close I came to ending a life I didn’t even know was in close proximity to my foot. So I stopped and observed for a bit. I discovered that black beetles are creepy looking, really! I imagine if you filmed them and blew it up to be as big as say a Semi, you would have the making of a monster straight out of a Sci-fi horror movie. I had not to this point seen a beetle on my walks and wondered what was the dude doing out here all by himself? Are beetles solitaries or do they congregate in families? I am woefully beetle knowledge lacking. So I did what I try not to do for these lighthearted walks; I researched. They can infest flowers for the pollen or nectar, bore tunnels into tree bark, they have big eyes…then I came into shocking news, ladybugs are beetles and so are (dramatic pause) fireflies. Fireflies are beetles? What’s the world coming to? This black freaky looking insect is in the same family as a delicate light delightful firefly? Can you imagine a phylum family reunion? A real daunting thought; maybe you can, based on your own family reunion.
Diversity is something that we often don’t deal too well with. We like similarity mainly because well it’s similar, familiar, non-challenging, diversity is ahh, different, it can seem to be out of order, a hodgepodge, a mess. We might often find ourselves squelching (or in the beetle’s case nearly squashing) it in order to gain what appears to us to be order. Since I broke an unwritten rule and researched let me go deep and throw a psychological question at you- who determines what order is, what is chaos and what is harmonious? If you look at nature which I’m doing and you are a believer that Abba got this business all started then it might just stand to reason that He thinks black beetles, fireflies, and ladybugs are all part of the same family, that they belong to each other in a way that we don’t understand, that there is great grace and symmetry in their appearance diversity.
I know one thing for sure, though I strive to be like Him, I’m sure most observers would have a difficult time not seeing a wide diversity between us. I am ever thankful that though that may be the case, He still calls me His daughter, He claims kinship, I’m part of His family. Can’t wait for the reunion.
k
