REFLECTIONS

Differences

We both chuckled when we saw the looks of a hillbilly watching our car go by from the front porch of the old farmhouse he called home. We found humor from his bib overalls that hid a bulge in his waistline (but not completely) and from the dusty, sweat stained fedora tilted on his head. Though we couldn’t tell from the distance, he may have held a toothpick in the corner of his mouth to hold a plug of snuff in his jaw. Then came a sobering thought. “One of God’s children,” one of us said. Our faces straightened.

We looked upon the man differently then, though nothing about him had changed. He still had the looks of a hillbilly, and the old farmhouse porch had not gained a fresher finish. But the way of life we looked upon felt some way different—one of God’s children.

God loves hillbillies too. He made them in his image just as you and me, and he created them with a purpose in mind just as he gave you and me. So, I think we laughed that day because he lived differently from my brother and me.

We were born different—a different place, around different people doing different things. We didn’t grow up with farm animals living in our backyard, and chickens pecking for pebbles so their gizzards could grind the seeds their beaks found in the dirt. We grew up differently than that and we paused in our travels for a moment or two to appreciate our hillbilly brother.

God placed him right where we found him. Likely he was born there and taught there to plow the fields, milk the cow, and steal eggs from the chickens’ nests every day. His grandmother may have shown him how to churn butter, and to savor the warm buttermilk left over. On Sundays, his mom served fried chicken, and in the summer, he sometimes watched salty sweat drip from his brow while he turned the handle of the ice cream freezer.

My brother and I do connect with Sunday fried chicken and the scene with the ice cream handle, but God made us different. God directed the paths our journeys have taken us, shaped us into who we came to be, and in some unexplainable way, what we came to do. And I wonder now, as I relive the scene we found that day, if that man with the hillbilly looks was as amused about our differences as we found humorous about his.

We are God’s children too.

“You are the light of the world,”

Richard +

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