Cookies

I decided for this week's post to deviate from the portraits I had been working on. So this photo comes out of my archive from Christmas break. Every year, my family spends part of Christmas Eve decorating cookies. However, there are no frosting bags or cookie decorating tools. The rules are simple, we can only use table knives (and toothpicks for the more creative of us). It is so fun to see our personalities come out in the cookies we make. We never make the same one, but it is often very obvious who made which cookie. I like this photo for the variety in unity. There are many different shapes, but they are held together by the common colors and accents on each cookie. I like the fact that although they are very different, put together, they create a sort of rhythm and pattern.
People as a whole are like this. We are all so different, but when we are in a crowd, it seems that the individuals are no longer seen or deemed as important. We become a group. Only the ones that are really different get noticed and possibly not for a good attribute (like the cookie with the cashew eyebrows). However, God calls us to be in the world not of it, which requires us to be different. There should be something noticeably different about Christians than other people in the world. While we are belittled for being different here on earth, that is the exact response that we should be getting because Jesus wasn't accepted either, so it's actually a good thing for us to be made fun of.
So maybe the cashew eyebrows aren't so bad after all.