The Lesson of the Daffodils
It’s March, and the first signs of spring have begun to appear. The days are getting warmer, the birds are singing, the bugs are out, and flowers have begun to appear. Every year without fail, the same flower appears first: the daffodil. With bravery and determination they lift their heads high and seem to drive away the winter gloominess with their cheery glow.
If you’re like me, you can’t let the daffodils’ beauty go to waste, and you grab your camera every spring to conduct a photo shoot of the gorgeous flowers. As you wander among the patches ofblossoms, you notice something: Not all the daffodils look the same. Some resemble the sun, golden through and through, while others have white petals with a contrasting pink, yellow, or orange center. As you wander throughout the patches of flowers, you notice that the bigger the variety of colors and shapes you see, the more excited you get. You look forward to seeing new styles and designs.
That’s the beauty of God: He loves diversity. And He didn’t stop with the daffodils when creating our beautiful and diverse world. God created different kinds of flowers, different kinds of animals, and different kinds of people. He made us in different shapes, sizes, and colors. Just like the daffodils, he wanted us to find beauty in the diversity of the human race.
Unfortunately, many of us resent our differences. We’ve labeled those different than us as inferior–not as important or valuable because in our minds we’re obviously better than they are.
In Genesis, God says, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us” (NLT). We were created in God’s image. Granted a few thousand years of sin have somewhat altered how much we resemble God, but we were all designed after God. And yet we have so much diversity.
God is infinite. There is more to Him than we can ever imagine. Many different traits make up God. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul calls us a body. The body of Christ. And each of us serves a specific purpose. We each have our own task, our own talent, given to us by our diverse and creative God. We are designed after one of the many aspects of God. We reflect Him in our own special way, and we each help complete the body. Without the diversity of talents, we would never benefit God’s cause–we would never effectively spread His truth and love. Without external diversity, we would miss God’s beauty.
No one–with their quirks and uniqueness–was designed or created by mistake. So let us remember each spring the lesson of the daffodils.
