Sitting on the covered deck of my friends’ house, I take in the sights, sounds, and scents. A gentle breeze stirs spring-like air on this June morning. A line of hardwood trees fringes the edge of the yard at this place where I am blessed to be guest. Just beyond those trees, a small pond traces the contours of its terrain. Even in this cooler than normal spring, its surface is already blanketed by green algae. 

Less than twenty feet away, a tulip poplar blooms, lifting waxy pods of light orange, soft green, and a hint of yellow above clusters of four-pointed leaves. Above and beyond its branches, beyond the line of trees defining the yard and woods, a hint of storm shows in clouds stretching from the horizon. Wisps of darker blue drift across their view and through the occasional stretching, a hint of pale skies above that. Toward the east, a quick blaze of sun burns through a thin opening in the clouds and then disappears. 

A few feet away from me, a solitary butterfly stretches its wings flat against a porch plank, raises them up into vertical touch for only an instant, and lowers them back to horizontal. A cluster of gold colors the wings close to its body while at the tips, a black background with white dots offers greater contrast. 

A sprinkling of rain begins to dabble the painted boards of the deck.

Somehow in the vastness, and diversity of all that I see in this limited view looking west, there is harmony. It is as if everything, no matter how different or even strange, was intended to be a part of this and to exist in some sort of harmony. The shapes of branches, the texture of grass, the patterns of color on the leaves of ornamental plants and the wings of butterflies, all fit into this. Each thing not only fitting but making the view richer, more vivid, or just more pleasant.

It seems it would be good, too, if we as other elements of what God has created, might give more attention, and make greater effort, to fit into this divine plan, without resentment of those whose form and nature differs from ours.