Glass by God

I have taken up a new hobby. It actually came from a combination of a travel channel episode I watched a long time ago and recent walks on the beach thinking about church and life. The beach near our house is quite rocky in places. So as I was walking along I would take a look at the rocks every now and then. I would pick out some interesting ones every now and then. Then one day I found a small piece of glass. This brought my mind back to the old travel channel show about Sea Glass.

Sea Glass is glass that has been worn down by water and tumbling across rocks till it has been smoothed so it resembles a small rock. So a lot has been going on with church and life lately and I find that I can gather my thoughts and listen best near the water. So I have been down by the water a lot lately. I have been honing my sea glass skills and have been learning a lot from my walks on the beach and my gathering of sea glass. So these are some of the lessons I have learned.

-You have to be attentive to what God is doing around you. There are a lot of rocks on the beach not much sea glass. You have to pay attention. You have to look for it.

-The more you look for it the more you see. God is working all around us. Sometimes we just walk by and don’t see it. Although if you’re looking for it you will see it. The more you sea glass you find the more your eye gets trained to notice the distinct colors and textures in sea glass. We can train our senses to see God in places we couldn’t see him before.

-God is not done with us. There is a line between broken glass on the beach and sea glass. The line can sometimes be hazy. I have found the more pieces I discover the more I am throwing ones back. If it isn’t totally smooth I am throwing them back now. There are some exceptions if there is something unique about a piece but I didn’t used to do that. I kept ones with some hard edges still on them. I have since gone through my collection and taken some back to the beach and threw them back. God isn’t done with us. Until we are a tiny smooth little piece of glass he isn’t done with us yet. So many times we think we have arrived at some plateau. And we have. We got to the beach so we could take a look at ourselves and get thrown back in to be worked on and be smoothed out some more.

-You can be selective. I think when we started Veritas we were looking for good people and didn’t care as much about other things. I am finding that it is ok to let good people go. They might not jive with who we are or it may not be the right place for them at this time in their life. Thats ok. I hope they find a good church somewhere else. I can let good things go now. I am passing over good pieces or throwing great ones back because they aren’t quite smoothed out yet. I can do that with life too.

God has met me so many times over that past couple months out walking and finding this stuff. I know there are many more lessons to be learned. I am looking forward to it.