The Strangeness of God

Today is a strange day. It's snowing here in Atlanta. I'm sorry...I thought it was March. Snowing and -- strangely -- sunny. It got me to thinking about snow and snowflakes and stuff like that. What possesses God to make each snowflake individually? If I was God, I'd just have me a snowflake machine that pumps them out in some kind of uniform fashion. Each snowflake would be perfectly the same, and I'd only have to create one prototype. They'd look the same, weigh the same and fall in the same pattern.

Not God, though. He makes everything individually -- everything is strange in its own way -- including you and me. This strikes me as strangely inefficient. But just as every artist has his or her own unique signature, perhaps strangeness is God's fingerprint.

Here's a quote from G.K. Chesterton that may explain why God does what he does:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough.... It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

There's no use trying to make God cool. God isn't cool -- at least not in the way we usually define coolness. God is strange. And I'm fully prepared to be thought of as strange as I stand amazed at what he manages to do and how he manages to do it.