I went down to the beach that day, a beach I haven’t been to before.
I was looking forward to some calm and quiet there, to enjoy the sea breeze and nature. I love the beach, the wind, the breeze – it always make me feel close to Jesus somehow.
I walked a little further down to find a quiet spot a bit away from the rocks, and from people. The big rocks from the harbor area were slowly replaced by what I thought would be sand or pebbles.
But instead, this beach was full of seashells.
As far I could see, there were seashells.
Billions of seashells.
It looked beautiful, but I didn’t really want to walk further, as I feared I would break them.
Then I looked closer, and I realized that many of them were already broken. Some of them completely shattered. Only a few of them were still whole.
It made me braver somehow. They were already broken, so me trampling on them wouldn’t make that much of a difference.
I found my quiet spot and sat on that beach, in the midst of those seashells. A sea full of shells, all of them unique, some of them broken, some of them whole, some of them shattered.
Just. Like. us.
Everyone of us is unique.
We are all born into certain circumstances that we can’t change. Some of us are born into great families and grow up in a caring and sheltered environment, while others are born into broken or dysfunctional families. There is nothing any of us can do about that, nothing any of us can do about what we’re given early on in life.
Sometimes, we happen to be in the path of an abusive person, someone who just comes and tramples all over us. Some people are more resilient than others and might survive just slightly scratched, while others end up broken and shattered.
In any case, all of our lives are incredibly fragile and small. So fragile in fact, that it could be gone any minute.
But despite that, I don’t think any of us want to be forgotten. All of us somehow want to leave a mark in this world, in someone’s lives.
Until the very last day of our lives, we give our best. We dance to the melodies we are given, dance the dance we need to dance, hoping to perform as well as we can for the sake of our loved ones, hoping that through that, we won’t be forgotten.
That somehow, someone will remember us, the broken parts of us, the beautiful parts of us.
But at the end of the day, in the big picture, we’re only one of the masses.
One in a billion.
Depending on who we are, and what life has given or not given us, brought to or not brought to us, we survive this life better, or we survive it bruised, battered, or even shattered to the core.
I believe that sooner or later, we all have a shattering experience. Or else, that we become stones. Stones shatter less easily, don’t they? Stones somehow seem safer.
But at the end of the day, all of us, whether broken or not, whether hard as stone or not, we are offered to be saved. Saved by the God almighty himself.
He sees every single one of us. He has sent His son to save every single one of us, the broken and the whole ones.
He is the God of the universe, and yet he has created every single seashell.
He is an omnipresent God, He holds everything in the palm of His hand.
And yet He sees every single one, knows every melody of every heart, every experience, every single story.
He knows exactly when we’ve fallen apart.
He holds us. He heals us.
If not today, then maybe tomorrow. If not on earth, then definitely in heaven.
He has come to save every single one of us.
He loves every single one of us.
So, I want to say, to all of you broken seashells out there:
He has come to save us. He has come to restore us.
Let Him restore you.
Listen to the song I wrote about those one billion broken seashells.
