Small Girl: Did God paint you?
Azeem: Did God paint me? [laughs] For certain.
Small Girl: Why?
Azeem: Because Allah loves wondrous varieties.
– From Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
The creation that surrounds us is marvelous. The plethora of variety is quite astounding. Take my little piece of property for example:
On my just under ½ acre parcel of land there are:
- 9 kinds of trees.
- 12 kinds of birds.
- 8 kinds of land animals have traversed ranging from bears to turtles.
- The number of plants classified as weeds is immense.
This partial list doesn’t even touch the wide range of insects and/or bugs like ants, bees and butterflies. Or the worms in the ground. All of this is on one, small parcel of land. 1 parcel, in 1 city, in 1 county, in 1 state, in 1 country, on 1 continent, on 1 planet, in 1 galaxy, in 1 universe.
When I think about the vast amount of creation in my one speck of dirt compared to the vastness of the universe, my mind is blown. Every time. I can’t even fathom the amount of different things in all of creation. Did you hear that? My mind blew again.
To say that God loves wondrous varieties is an understatement.
Like everything else in God’s creation, we humans are full of wondrous variety:
- How our hair grows
- The color of our skin
- The shape and/or color of our eyes
- The contour of our builds
- The timber of our voices
The list goes on and on!
Why then do we have to be divided by race, color, creed? What a bland world we’d live in if we all looked, acted and sounded the same. Let’s celebrate our diversities. Let’s compare cultures and histories. This is the United States of America. Let’s act like it and unite.
E Pluribus Unum!
