Beautiful Things
This weekend I was able to enjoy a fabulous couple of days along the Oregon coast with my sister and brother-in-law. We attended a comedy show raising money for cancer research where a friend of mine was the host. Some other friends were also present and we shared dinner together. It was a fabulous evening supporting a great cause.
We spent the night and then were able to enjoy some beautiful weather the next day... a rarity on the Oregon Coast in my experience! We went to Bullards Beach State Park, just north of Bandon, walked around the lighthouse there and strolled down the beach for quite a ways. There were many treasures washed ashore on the beach; the most I have ever seen. The weather was perfect for such a day and as I admired the view of the sky and the ocean and the beach all stretching off together in all directions, the many shiny and unique items strewn across the sand got me to doing some thinking.
LIFE is kind of like the waves of the ocean and we are like the stones, the shells, the glass or other items getting tossed about by the waves. We start out as whole pieces.
The waves pound us. Bounce us around. Roll us and rub us raw. They make us holy.
A shell in its wholeness is beautiful and a unique thing to find but when they are whole they often look mostly the same. In the midst of the pounding from the waves it is broken and made beautiful in new ways. The wearing, the cracks, holes, brokenness now make each item unique and different than all the others and now when they are strewn about they create an amazing motif.
Even as the shells and stones and glass and everything else is ground up, tinier and tinier, becoming the innumerable sands along the beaches and dunes. Even then there is beauty in the breaking down of the many, many little sand particles that have been ground up...together, making a larger, united, palette in their ground up state.
We do not make it thru this life undamaged. It is not possible to avoid being tossed about, broken.
Beautiful things are made out of the brokenness.
Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend."
The Apostle Paul tells us to rejoice in our sufferings. You can't rejoice about the waves bouncing you around and breaking you if you're not talking about it. You can't see God working in someone's brokenness if you're not present and listening. Don't turn a blind eye to suffering. Do not avoid it or flee from it. Look to God in the tossing of the waves pounding others, and you. And be the friend who sharpens another by standing by their side. You will not regret the reward: amazing works of art, holy stones and sands, uniquely individual and captivating together. Beautiful Things.
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