Differences

Living here in Arizona, you get to see many differences. The first you will notice is the climate. In the North, it is usually 10 degrees cooler than in the South. The next thing you notice is that all the green appears to be up North. More desert in the South. Travelled up to the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert this weekend. Amazingly beautiful!!! It's amazing as you start from Phoenix, you see desert and low mountains. As you start to travel North, more fir trees and more mountains. This time of year, there was even still snow on the ground! Then you come toward Holbrook....It's a plateau. You're at a higher elevation, but the ground is pretty flat!! Lots of scrub brush, some squat trees and it looks like it will go on forever!

God did good! He even made each human being different from another. It's these differences that bring us together. Think about it....If we were all the same, what would we learn? What would we actually see? Sameness, predictability and safety. If we all live in a cocoon, we never move forward.

It's our fear that tears us apart, not our differences. Sure, the unknown is scary! But are we truly unknown from one another? We're all human. We all live and we all die. We all cry. We all love and we all hate. When it matters most, we are all the same. It's our minor differences that make us unique.....the color of our hair, eyes, skin. Our family values, our faith.

Science has brought us to places that would have been considered blasphemy years ago. Yet, science is still a part of God....no matter who or what that god may be. We should be rejoicing in our differences, just as we do our sameness. Does no one learn from the past? Why keep records at all if no one heeds them? Life will always hold challenges....

For instance...think about the Petrified Forest. These are trees that lived millions of years ago! They are no longer what they were, but they're not really dead either. They are living rock. Quartz so hard that only a diamond-tipped saw can cut it. I would call that tenacity! We all grow and change, even million-year old trees.

Everything around us was once something else. And none of it is ours. We just rent for a little while.

We need to get along as we're all we've got. We're here for a reason and need to make the best of it. Even if that reason is to just far off aliens years and years from now who we were, are and will be. Learn from the Earth. She has embraced her differences and moved forward, from the tiniest of microbe to the tallest of mountains.

We should help our fellow man, not pull him down. Two people with a difference of opinion can still both be right. There's always more than one side to every argument, story, problem and all should be explored.

So, next time you're in a bad mood just smile and say "Hi" to someone and see the response you get. You may be surprised to find the smile and goodwill returned in kind. And it took you 2 seconds to accomplish.