Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away—actually, it wasn’t even a galaxy yet. This was a place before outer space. Before space-time. Before the universe.

Everything was formless and void. Pure nothingness. Emptiness. Absolutely blank, dark matter. Sort of like the inside of a celebrity’s head.

Then. It happened.

There was, suddenly, the beginning of all things. It started with light. And the light was good. And the stars and the planets and the galaxies and the solar systems fell into place and started spinning. And they were good, too.

Then God got to thinking about how He could make His wonderful creation a little better. He thought to Himself, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll make people.”

So that’s when He got to the drawing board. He started thinking about all the people He was going to make throughout the history of the world. Throughout the 300,000 years of humankind’s complicated existence. All 117 billion humans who have ever lived since the dawn of Homo sapiens.

He drew up plans for all the kings and queens and peasants and saints and artists and composers and architects and mathematicians and scientists and music makers and inventors and painters and thinkers and revolutionaries and teachers.

He designed each one. Inside and out. He chose their hair color. Their shoe size. He selected their parents. Their circumstances. What kind of cars they would drive someday. What their health insurance co-pays would be.

He designed their childhoods. The street where they lived. The bike they would ride. And all their little friends. He chose their wardrobes. Their personalities.

He decided when, exactly, they would lose their first baby tooth. And when, precisely, they would need that emergency appendectomy. He planned it all.

And when all the preliminary plans for creation were almost finished, God sat back and looked at his drawings. He already had made quite an amazing planet, if he did say so Himself.

He had developed a place with all sorts of wondrous possibilities. A place with a rich diversity of life. A flowering planet that produced so much uniqueness it was unlike anything ever conceived. A planet that would eventually bring forth an assortment of awe and beauty, producing everything from rickshaws and Grand Canyons, to the Cincinnati Reds and Barbara Eden.

But something still wasn’t right. There was definitely something missing.

God thought about this for a long time. It bugged Him. It kept Him up at night. His creation JUST wasn’t complete. Not yet.

So He searched His plans thoroughly, tearing through billions of pages and blueprints of humanity, looking to see what He’d forgotten. He tore His notebooks apart, scouring through each set of schematics, meticulously trying to find where something was missing.

And then He found it.

How could He have missed it?

“Of course!” He said with a laugh.

There was a giant, glaring hole in his artwork. An integral missing piece. This piece was so important, so vital to the course of life, so essential to His grandiose masterwork, that without this small piece, the whole thing—the whole universe—just wasn’t correct.

Well, God got so excited at His own discovery, He almost couldn’t stand Himself. He flew into His workshop that very moment, and stayed up all night crafting His most prized and glorious piece of artwork.

When it was finished, He wept with joy when He saw how wonderful this new thing was. He clutched it against Himself and bathed it with His own tears and gentle kisses. The universe had been a fine thing before, yes. But now. Now it was whole. Now it was complete.

And anyway, that’s how God made you.