Differences

I love the variety of plants, the incredible creativity in their myriad colors, blooms, leave shape, soil needs, stalks, smells.........if you can't find a plant you like out of all the available choices then the problem is not the plant.

I love many plants.... maybe even all. I can't think of a single one I feel animosity for. I feel brief anger when I see the grape ivy choking the azalea bush in our yard, but siblings can be aggressive at times. A little pruning and some stern words and the grape ivy is repentant until I turn my back again.

I don't even mind the so called weeds. Were it not for the weeds, our lawn would not have a spot of green in it! And how did dandelions get labeled weeds anyway? Those orange flashes of brightness that give way to little fluffy balls so fun to sweep through the air and watch seeds like angels float through the sky.

And then there are some of the more impossible plant characters. The plant that catches and eats flies.... the Venus Fly Catcher (native only to NC by the way) or his more dangerous brother the Pitcher Plant that can trap and eat a mouse. There are the magnificent redwood that grow for hundreds of years, or the kudzu that grows a foot a day. The kudzu is one of my favorites, though it deserves its own blog post. For now, the salient Kudzu fact is it was introduced from Japan as a highly desirable shade/forage plant in 1876 and then declared a weed in 1972. This does not seem fair at all, and if I were kudzu, I think I would storm the USDA offices and grow all over their stupid weed rule books.

But it serves as a vital part of today's musings. How can I love the differences in plants so much but find the differences in people so irksome? Not all differences, mind you, just the ones that annoy me. There are some things I think all people should be... though I would never ask all flowers to bloom the same way. Still, things like being late should be punishable by death, especially if it slows me down. I don't need to go into my list. Trust me I have one. I bet you do too. I have been chastised for some of my differences. Like if you don't love loud parties you must be some sort of hermit that never cuts your toenails or hair. Don't weep for me though... I have done my share of chastising others for their differences.

And the funny part about accepting differences, truly accepting, I believe hinges on what is the same in all of us. If we were all flowers, we may have incredible variety in our blossoms but the common factor is beauty. We are people though, at least most of you reading this blog are, and I believe the common factor is that we all have a soul created by a loving God for a purpose and loved by Him. If I can train myself to look through the thorns or rough bark or pungent scents to focus on that one fact, I suspect I could learn to love even the perennially late people.

1 Corinthians 1:10
¹⁰I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.