rich

You know, if I had been assigned to create the world, I’m pretty sure I would have come up with just one of everything: one kind of fruit, one kind of bird. A tree, a flower, a vegetable.

There. Done.

But God, on the other hand, seems delighted to splash about variety and creativity in unfathomable amounts. It’s one of my favorite parts of His personality. He is no lazy novelist, dealing in cliches and stock characters. He is no harried cook, pulling a generic meal from the supermarket freezer. He is no mindless designer, who thinks in cookie-cutter shapes and shades of grey.

He “richly provides us with everything to enjoy.”

He is extravagant.

And this is rarely clearer to me than when I encounter a new culture. A new language, which arranges its mental world in a totally unexpected way. A new climate and a new cast of unique plants and animals — sometimes so different from mine that I almost feel like I’m on a different planet.

That was Mexico — and it was a stunningly beautiful new planet. Cactuses grow on green mountains among green grass, and not in the stereotypical desert. Houses are painted every shade of happy. (Selling paint there must have so much more scope for the imagination than it would in my very staid hometown).

I walked down the street with no idea of the social cues. Is it bold to make eye contact; is it rude if I don’t? Should I wave at strangers in my neighborhood?

I was introduced to dear friends of friends, and wondered. Do I hug him? Or do I shake his hand? I see she kisses their cheeks — but is it an air kiss like Israel, or is it a real one? Not all my split-second decisions were the right ones.

I encountered food that made me say “Is it a fruit, or a vegetable? (I still didn’t know, even after I cut it open). “Should I eat it raw or cooked — and how in the world do I remove the spines?” I encountered food with familiar names — that hardly looked (or tasted) like what I had a home. And that was a very (very) good thing.

I know: I’m incredibly blessed to see more of this wide world He made. To see more signs of what is going on in His mind. To say again, and with more conviction than last time I said it: “He has done all things well.”