Today I was blessed to spend time at the beach. The beach is our vacation go to but Sparky and I love very different things about it. Sparky loves to go between laying in the sun and playing in the ocean. I love to lay in the shade on a comfy beach chair but I can only lay around for so long before I get ants in my pants and need to get moving. I love playing in the ocean but really only if the water is crystal clear. If it’s not, I freak a little…..my rule….no swimming if I can’t see my feet. (It’s because of a lake swim in Texas when I was in junior high and a snake wrapped itself around my arm…….childhood scarring is real y’all!) But the thing I love most at the beach is walking up and down collecting seashells.
Seashells fascinate me. There are big ones and teeny tiny ones and all sizes in between. There are smooth ones and rough ones and ones covered in barnacles. There are thick shells and dainty thin shells. There are dark ones and light ones and ones with patterns and ones that are iridescent. No one shell looks exactly like another but there are groups that look similar but still different from other groups.
Another thing I love doing is people watching……and boy howdy does the beach provide some amazing people watching! And, watching people who are picking up shells is kind of amazing. What amazed me most today is that I didn’t really see anyone shell searching until I started and then it became a thing for a while. It’s like the people with whom we were sharing the beach suddenly saw the shells they had been walking on all day and realized that there were treasures to be found and they started searching……but as I overheard conversations….. most people were only looking for ones that were big and whole and pretty. I’d hear “too tiny, throw it back”, “all the big good ones are gone”, “no, it’s broken, chuck it.”
As I grabbed handful after handful of all kinds of shells, I hear the Lord’s whisper above the loud chatter of the crowded beach…..”Look for the broken ones, darlin'”. And so I did. I pulled up handfuls of broken shells. I pulled up all sorts of broken ones. Some were just tiny pieces of their former glory. Some were whole but with a hole. Some were whole but had scars on them. Some had barnacles on them. And God reminded me that it’s these broken shells that, over time, get ground down to an almost a powdered sugar consistency and He uses them to make up the beautiful beach where we are vacationing.
And then I thought….these broken shells are just like us…..you and me. Some of us are broken. Tiny pieces of our former glory. Some of us are whole but life has left us with a hole in our hearts. Some of us are whole but have huge scars on us or in us. Some of us have barnacles on our butts. :-).
Just like the shells on the beach, we can get walked on by others in life. Some who do the walking are those who are on vacation, just livin’ the dream and forgetting to look around at those upon whom they are stepping. Some who do the walking are just concerned about getting to a place that’s more comfortable for them. Sometimes it’s the waves that do the beating…..just life that punches over and over until the seas calm.
Sometimes we are the ones walking on others. We are too concerned about where we are going and just can’t see past our own noses to see who we are stepping on, until someone cuts our foot.
But God…..yeah, y’all know I’m going there. BUT GOD! Aren’t those the two best words in the universe?
Just like God uses those broken shells to make a beautiful beach, He takes us in our brokenness and remolds use into something beautiful. He takes things that happen in life…..in this fallen world…..things that break us and scar us and leave us with barnacles, and slowly, over time He reshapes us and then……are you ready for this……He puts us with others who are broken and He makes something beautiful. It’s not a “He just uses one in their brokenness” kind of thing. You can’t make the beach without a bazillion shells…….you can’t make the world right without a bazillion broken people……in love and focused on the one broken for all of us….Jesus….and then the world sees …….. beautiful.
A Beautiful Mess 