Different by Design

I awoke to a spectacular view outside my window this morning. The snow that fell overnight was the coarse, fluffy kind. The soft flakes covered everything with a layer of Narnia-like magic that the best potato flake Hollywood scene couldn’t even begin to mimic.

Did you know that scientists have developed an entire classification system for snowflakes?  The facets of each crystal can contain a countless variety of dendrites, grooves, ridges, sectored plates, columns, needles, bullets, sheaths, chandelier crystals, rosettes, arrowheads, and caps. The close-up photos are stunning!

Each snowflake is a unique masterpiece. Each tiny crystal is a testimony to the genius, creativity, sheer enthusiasm, and power of the Designer who created them. Scientists say that it could snow day and night until the sun dies and still no two snowflakes would ever be precisely alike! Each one different! It’s difficult to even begin to fathom. No wonder the poet Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal that a snowflake is the product of enthusiasm. ” How full of the creative genius s the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat.”(1)

The difference and uniqueness of each sparkling crystal is what makes snowflakes so spectacular. Their beauty is accentuated by the difference. Our Creator delights in making things according to His unique design.  That’s why snowflakes are different. That’s why male and female are different. That’s why each individual is different.

The modern-day bending, blending, and blurring of distinction between male and female is tragic – not only because it assaults the message to which gender points – but also because it negates our uniqueness.  We are different by His design – and therein lies the beauty.

(1)Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau (Salt Lake City:  Peregrine Smith, 1984) 87-88.

Here are some photos I took this morning of my backyard “Narnia Lamp” and Stone Lady

© Mary A. Kassian