Holy Brit

If you have ever really looked at bugs you will know what I mean when I say that the complexity of creation is a work of art. My children, of course, love all those cases of cockroaches and carpenter ants in zoos and museums - somewhere we were recently even allowed them to handle giant bugs - but if you look beyond the gross to the detail - all those legs and colors, all that marching together for those ants, all that endless toil for worker drones. All of it so varied that it should take our breath away.

I think I am right in saying that strict Buddhists will not kill an insect because it is a living thing. I will not go that far - ants in my house get squirted with a nasty chemical pretty fast - but I did learn a good thing from my parents - first of all look at a creature and secondly ask yourself what harm is it doing you. Now, this is easier in a country where there are few poisonous creatures and none of them deadly - but still the point stands - what harm is the house spider doing you.

Further, my parents, would have me observe the bug in close detail - see how amazing it is. Large spiders in our house were greeted by howls of amusement and my father making what I can only describe as his "spider running across a room noise" which went dinga,dinga,ding - but very much faster than you might imagine those words could be said.

Well, you might not be able to stand spiders and my parents certainly never linked us looking at these little creatures to the creator - but there are always small moments of wonder. There are always little things which tell us that God is really there. Sometimes it might be the amazing irridesence of an African beetle, other times the warmth of the sun - but all those little things add up to the same one big picture - a God who guilded the butterfly and makes each of us carefully.

We too have those same moments of beauty, but wwe have our poison. Perhaps an insidious sort of poison is the one which does not see God's hand in each person on this earth - which allows God to be creator but not all humanity to be created.