Men & Women - the same all around the world

I've noticed something in my travels - so many things are different in different cultures. I've been reminded here in Russia, relationships between men and women are far more similar than different. Let me give you some simple examples:

Last night before Finals, as the officials were lining up to march out, some of the ladies took it as their responsibility to make sure I looked my best. They straightened my collar and my tie and insisted that for the marching out, I had to button all 3 buttons on my suit jacket. I didn't want to but I did after they insisted, all the while talking about me and laughing a little. When I looked down the line at the other men, the ladies promptly got after them......and the men complied!

Is that not what happens around the world? Maybe men generally have less awareness of fashion or perhaps presentation. Women see it as their duty to make sure everyone is in line.

Then afterwards, when most people had changed out of their uniforms and into street clothes, I noticed something else. Shoes. Women around the world are all about their shoes. Tons of different styles and each checking out the others shoes.

God has created us with some internal wiring. Imagine what we men would look like if the women around us didn't see it as their personal duty to make sure we look presentable?

But seriously, we see it in creation, back in Genesis. There is an order to our world. He created them "male and female." Even in the curses of the Fall in Genesis 3 there is an order and we see it at work every day.

God's world has built-in ways and consequences. We violate His created boundaries at our own peril. When we choose God's ways, then He is able to bless us. Able to....He always wants to but when we make a choice to live outside what He has set up, we live in trouble and peril. For instance, when someone chooses to smoke there is a likelihood they will contract lung cancer. God didn't cause it but there is a "built-in" (is judgment too harsh a word). We "reap what we sow." I don't mean to imply that bad things only happen when we do something bad. Bad things can happen when others around us choose to injure or even destroy us through no fault of our own.

Imagine a world where there was fidelity in marriage, where honesty, transparency and integrity were high values. These are some of God's boundaries. Violating them creates bad things in and around our lives.

We may not understand or even always like God's created order but try living within its boundaries - that's where He can bless us.