Don't Mess with Mother Nature

We've had a beautiful, snow-covered wonderland to look at all day from our living room windows. Snow is so gorgeous the first day or two, before we humans start leaving our footprint and tire track signatures everywhere. We'll soon witness the pure, white landscape transformed into a dirty, messy muck wherever mankind leaves his mark.

Being Sabbath, I was thinking about how our Creator God made us in His image. We love to create too. But left to our own devices and without His help, we have a knack for messing up what God has created. Environmentalists, at least those who believe in God, would agree with this. We have done a lot to ruin our environment over the years.

And what have we done with the delicious menu God gave to Adam and Eve? Our tired, old world still has a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains to entice our appetites. But we insist on creating our own dishes with a combination of foods and spices that don't provide the nutrition we were meant to have. Often with unhealthy results.

We only have to look at a crowd of people to see our paltry attempts to create beauty on our bodies too. We forget that the kind of beauty that counts is on the inside. To me, an extreme form of altering God's creation is when we allow our bodies to be tattooed and/or pierced. What message does this send to God? "You didn't create me beautiful enough. I need to improve on the body you gave me. Let me be a human billboard of man's art. And while I'm at it, I really need to put holes in my body to hang rocks. Why didn't you provide that, God?" ...You get the idea.

My Toilet Touch

Today has been a blur of activity with my husband gone for the day. Almost all of it right here at home. But when I look around, it really doesn't show that I've been all that busy. I did dishes, some laundry, emptied trash, fed and watered the bird and dog, went to the store, bank, library, and gas station. Plus took my nephew to work and back, made several phone calls and meals, and completed studying my Sabbath School lesson for teaching this week.

But oh, there is one little emblem of my touch today. After getting our new toilet installed last weekend, I've been dying to have the guys gone so I could put my little "women's homey touch" on it. So now the tank sports a scarf, some shells, and a decorative picture frame. I can now enter the "powder room" and breathe an "aahhhh" when I see my creative handiwork.

Yes, our greatest accomplishments are the ones we can see, the ones that last, the ones that are beautiful. Even if it's a simple toilet touch. My goal is to make something beautiful every day. It won't be hard. God has given us the materials and they are all around us.