We’ve just returned from a midweek break at Dube Private Game Lodge with the grandkids.
On the property, just outside the campsite, they keep a couple of donkeys. When the kids saw them, they noticed the strange stripes the animals had.
We decided they were a cross between zebras and donkeys and dubbed them “Zonkeys.”
Inspired by the unexpected Christmas Tea that the owners put on for all us campers, we began to feel that Christmas was really coming soon.
One evening, while drying and brushing the youngest’s long hair, I tried to distract her by making up a song to the tune of Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer. The kids joined in and this is our final copy.
I began to think about why we discriminate against people who are somehow different:- the deaf child, the boy with thick glasses, the dwarf, people in wheelchairs, people of other nationalities or cultures. What on earth makes us think we were all meant to be the same, (basically the same as us,) as if God made some kind of mistake when He created people with differences. This is a subject close to my heart and the main theme of my children’s book, The Saddest Little Sugar Bowl in the World.
Nelson Mandela coined the phrase The Rainbow Nation to describe South Africa. Every artist knows what happens if one takes all the colours and mixes them. The result is an uninteresting smudgy brown. A rainbow would have no beauty if each colour did not retain its individuality. Sure, there is some merging, like the green made in the transition between blue and yellow and the orange created between yellow and red.
God created everything. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Gen 1:31 NIV)
As a bumper-sticker reads, “God made me and He don’t make no junk!” Let us never look down on any person made in God’s image just because they are different. Let us never be the villains who “used to laugh and call him names.”
Coffee in the Rain 