Blogging Blast #2: Hey you! What’s going on out there…?!

(So just what is a Blogging Blast??  — BLOGGING BLAST #2)

I planted a green bell pepper plant next to a purple bell pepper plant this summer.  Now my green plant is giving me hybrids.  I’m not much of a gardening guru, but I suspect that there has been some serious botanical hanky-panky going on in that little plot. 

By any other color, would taste as sweet….

Diversity and variety are wonderful in the natural world—plants and flowers, dogs, people.  I love how God designed our DNA and genetics such that, when fitted together in various combinations, we get new-ness.  I love how the real flower lovers know how to combine them to make new colors and shapes to delight us in the spring and summer.  I love how you can cut of a branch from a Granny Smith apple tree and graft it into a Jonathon apple tree.  Shoot!  I love that there are different kinds of apple trees!  

I love how our granddaughter, (uncontestably the most beautiful granddaughter in the universe,…yeah, I know, I know, get pingbacks on that one), looks like both her mom and her dad, and at the same time is one hundred percent herself.  

And I admire how all the pieces that God fashioned to fit together are capable of doing what they’re made for, and those that aren’t, can’t.

Love it all.

Interestingly, it seems to be similar in the spiritual realm.  Reading through the Old Testament, a treasure house of fascinating history and revelation and glimpses of what God had in mind all along, there runs a consistent theme of people trying to fit together pieces that were never made to do that.   Vying for position instead of servanthood.  Choosing to worship “foreign” gods, instead of their authentic Creator.  Using position and authority for selfish ends, rather than building God’s kingdom on the planet.  

God calls it adultery and spiritual prostitution.  Pretty severe terms, and not just an indication of a Holy God’s displeasure, but of a Loving Father’s deep, personal pain.  Pieces that His children were trying to fit together that were not designed for combination, they were patients telling the surgeon how to do his job.  Or students trying to instruct the teacher. 

Or the clay to the potter (1)…

Our spiritual DNA is made to fit one way.  Jesus says, without hesitation and without apology:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

I’m enjoying my hybrid “green/purple” peppers, as I continue to be amazed at God’s beautiful gift of diversity.   I am equally grateful that He has created spiritual standards so that this diversity does not dissolve into chaos. 

Because when I harvest my Bell peppers, I don’t want them to taste like, say, brussel sprouts.

• See Isaiah 64:8
• John 14:6 New American Standard Bible(NASB) Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation