We Are Different, We Are Also the Same
There is little about this past year that we would call ideal. From sickness to racial strife and discord at every turn, our society has been in a state of mourning and restlessness. My husband and I seek to be ahead of the culture as we teach our children about the world around them. Either the culture will teach our children, or we will. Part of my desire in writing Creative God, Colorful Us is to provide a resource that helps parents equip their kids for such a time as this.
Creative God, Colorful Us is a fun book meant to help you and me teach the next generation. Throughout its pages, kids will get a picture of the gospel and how it changes everything—for good. We'll explore what it means that we are made in the image of God. We will see how our sin affects our relationships and how we can ask Jesus for forgiveness. We learn what it looks like to love our neighbor and how we can enjoy our beautiful, colorful, diverse family: the church. So that's a glimpse of what you'll find in Creative God, Colorful Us, a book written to the hearts and minds of kids aged seven to twelve. You might not sit down and read with your child like you did with your toddlers, so to give you a taste of what they'll read, here's a short portion of chapter 6: "We are Different, We Are Also the Same”:
My kids are artistic. I bet some of you are too. They like to draw and paint. They are creative and have great imaginations. They get their brilliant, artistic minds from the Lord and from their dad...not so much from me. In fact, I’m the complete opposite. While I’m creative, I’m not at all artistic and my imagination isn’t very, well, imaginative.
I remember one day when my son was four years old and he put his little hand on mine and began to pray, “Lord, make mommy’s hands be able to draw.” It was a sweet prayer. When he was finished, I looked at him and simply said, “God may never make mommy’s hands able to draw. But he has given me other gifts for his glory.” My son didn’t get it then, but thankfully he now understands the unique ways that God has gifted each of us.
God’s creation is so diverse. God could have made us all the exact same, but he didn’t. And our differences are good. The Bible tells us that our differences help each other.
The apostle Paul, the same one we learned about before, wrote a letter to the church in a city called Corinth. That letter is now called Corinthians in the Bible. In that letter, Paul shared that the church is like a body with many parts (1 Cor. 12:12).
Think about the human body. We have arms, legs, eyes, a nose, a head, ears, and all sorts of body parts to make up one body. And each body part does something different. Our eyes are not like our mouth. Our feet are not like our elbows. Our nose is not like our knees. And that’s a good thing! Can you imagine how silly you would look if your whole body was made up of just one body part, like the ear? Thankfully, God gave us different body parts that each do different things.
The church is the same way. The church is made up of many people, and these people are not all the same. The church is made up of people with all kinds of different gifts. Some people can sing. Some people love leading. Some enjoy teaching. Some people like making meals for others. Some people love to help. God is so creative that we can’t even list all the different ways he has made us!
Can you think of ways God has made you? What are things that you like to do? God created you like that!
God’s family isn’t only diverse because of the different ways we look and speak, we are also different in what we like to do and in the spiritual gifts God has given us. Do you see how wonderful our differences are? We can celebrate how God has made us.
But we have a problem.
We don’t always get along. Our differences aren’t sinful, but the way we treat each other because of our differences can be. Because of sin, we sometimes dislike a person simply because of the color of their skin. Because of sin, we are sometimes jealous of people who have gifts and talents that are not like ours. Because of sin, we may play favorites with people. When we play favorites with other people this is called the sin of partiality. Partiality is sinful favoritism. It means leaving others out or ignoring them because of your favoritism. Because favoritism can be a big problem in our friendships, let’s spend more time thinking about it.
We can play favorites for many reasons. One that stands out in the Bible in the book of James is favoritism for the rich. James was not happy with the people he was writing to because they were playing favorites. At their church, they were putting the poor people in the back and letting the rich people sit in the front. They were showing favorites (James 2). . . .
I know what it feels like to be left out. It doesn’t feel good. But God never excludes anyone. God doesn’t show favoritism. You and I can be happy knowing that God loves us.
