The world and me in it

So, I have been around this world 26 years. Sometimes I look at that time and I think how old I am, how much I've accomplished in my time here on earth, how far I've come. Other times I am humbled and realize how young I am, how little I know, how much I have to grow.
Today feels more like the latter. In a very good way. Did you know that we live here on planet earth...and we orbit the sun, at the exact distance from the sun that allows life to happen on this earth...and the sun, our star, sits in the milky way galaxy, which sits in a cluster of other galaxies, which sits in a super cluster of other galaxies...and did you know that the only thing holding this galaxy...and really everything...together is a mysterious substance called Dark Matter and without it we would just fall apart? Really. We've figured that out, it's not science fiction, look it up. We've also made telescopes that hopefully in the future, will align together to make a virtual super-telescope that will hopefully allow us to see the event-horizon on the super-massive black-hole that the milky way orbits around and prove it's existence? Did you know that we have robots that you can have conversations with? Did you know that we have a bicycle, that when you put on a special helmet with a device attached to it, it will read your mind and change gears when you tell it to? Did you know we have discovered particles that have defied all our known laws of physics by traveling faster than the speed of light?
We live on this little ol' planet and we've been around so long that these things just keep popping out of our brains. It's really just incredible to me that these marvelous, magnificent minds exist in this world. They are beautiful! The capacity for humanity to put into creation anything that we imagine is profound. We have been given tools to make the most imaginative dreams into reality.
Which gets me thinking to what is really real in this life. Here I am, on my computer, I can learn about the laws of physics from a TV show open to the public eye that created this universe. Anyone can watch it. And I look down and see this little scrap of fabric I've woven together with my crochet hook and yarn. Yes, I created that. Well, I organized it into something better. It was yarn and a hook, and I organized it into something else with more use, beauty, and structure than was there previously. I find pleasure in it, actually.
Then I pick up my five year old daughter while she's sleeping and carry her to her bed from where she fell asleep in our room, her gangly legs draping over my sides, her head resting it's weight on my shoulder, and I think, she used to fit in the crook of my arm. She used to hiccup while she was inside of me. I helped bring her body into existence. I helped will her body into this world.
BUT. I did not beget her soul. There is no doubt in my mind when I look into her eyes that she came to me as a friend, as a sister, and not as my creation, but a creation that I am to take charge of and care for. Just as I look at my scrap of crocheted fabric, I did not create the yarn. I did not weld the hook. I did not come up with the idea of crocheting in the first place. Yet I have a part in it's future now, just as I have a part in my children's future, my husband's future, and my own future.
Yet those feelings and yearnings to create are still there. I create a home out of a house everyday by the way I organize it. I create memories when I snap my camera and capture a laugh or a shared moment of love. I create warm hats to put on baby's heads to protect them from the elements. I feel inside of me that these are small pinwheels to a larger vehicle, that I have the capacity to create something unimaginable. I feel that I am very much in a training ground to teach me something more than what is here.
I look at the universe and not only am I humbled, but I am grateful. Anyone can feel that gratitude, when you think about all the things that had to happen in order for this world to exist, you are in a sense of awe, and that awe was given to us to reciprocate back to our Creator. It was meant as a blessing, and I often stand baffled to think that there was any way I could imagine all this being here without a purpose. Mother Nature could not have created this just by accident. There is always a WHY- why would I be here to experience what I experience just by accident? Why would I love if it were useless, or just some biological urge to keep me alive and keep me procreating? Anyone who has loved or felt love cannot deny that it goes beyond the physical- love is not something my body feels or experiences, it is something my soul feels and experiences. Why would I want to help other people if it didn't serve a higher purpose? Why would I feel pain if it weren't there to teach me something? Why would I even want to help someone else if the soul reason I was here was just to survive and exist because I happened to be living on a planet that just happened to be in the right place in the right time so that life could just happen to exist? No, we were created for a higher purpose by a higher being. It is undeniable. Of course we have a creator. Of course we love and feel loved. Of course we want to help other people, it comes from our divine heritage. Of course there is life after death, there is no way this would be all that there is. There is no way that hope could ever survive with all it's frailties in a world so coarse unless there was a real reason to hope. A real reason for life. To be something more. To progress. To grow. To learn. And it is undeniable to me that all the things we learn in this life will be put to good use in the next.
And I for one am grateful for it. I am nowhere near perfect, but I have a path. I know God lives. I know because of the very fact that I am capable of love. It could not come from anywhere but from a divine source, man is not capable of such divinity, and just as it would pain me to see my "creations" wasted, just as it would pain me to see my children throw their lives away, so it must pain our Heavenly Father to see His children not turn to Him for help, not see this beautiful world we've been given as a gift, not understand the true happiness and peace that gratitude, repentance, and forgiveness can bring to our lives.
Let us gather ourselves to Him who knows us best, especially this Christmas season. Let us show him we are grateful. Let us use this divine gift of love to give to those who are in need, to use this year to open a door, to make a phone call, to let go of a grudge, to rid ourselves of unnecessary painful baggage and give it to Him who carries all burdens, who takes upon Him our yokes, and carries us through. And be grateful.