I rolled the shell in my hands. My young son had pulled it from the ocean floor just moments before, and I pushed the goggles out of my eyes to have a closer look. Standing in waist-deep water, the waves gently rocked against me as I traced the golden olive shell with my finger. The sides were impossibly smooth and shiny as though someone had recently polished them. “How can it be this shiny?” I asked my son. He shrugged. I assumed it was the shell’s environment—the rubbing and rolling of sand and water and ceaseless movement. But a little internet sleuthing later revealed that it’s not the sand that makes the shell so polished and smooth. It wasn’t the environment. It was the creature that lived in it.
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Why did I react like that? The words slipped out with little thought, but the harshness of them hit their mark. I could tell by the expression on his face that my thoughtlessness had cut deeply. Why do I do this? I thought to myself. Will I ever think before I speak? Will I ever be slow to speak? Sometimes I wonder if the Lord will ever give up on me. I am so slow to change, so slow to shed those old-creature responses even though I’ve walked with Christ for a good long time now. I feel the pinch of sinful tendencies clinging more tightly than I thought they would by now. The ugliness in me claws its way out sometimes with a big voice and demand to be in charge. I want, so much of the time, to be better.
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My sister showed me how to find sea glass in California. We sat on a chilly beach last May sifting through sugary white sand for little pieces of light. A tiny flash of green glinted in the California sun. I pinched it between my fingers and dropped it into Lauren’s open palm. “It’s everywhere—if you know how to look for it,” she said, adding the tiny emerald shard to her collection. “But where does it come from?” I asked, rubbing the smooth edges of another green piece of glass. “Broken beer bottles sometimes,” she answered. Trash sent out into the waves, broken and fractured. Tumbling about in years of sand and water. Rubbed smooth into tiny pieces of refracted light. I held it in my hand. Broken bottles become treasures.
I flipped through an old journal recently. More than ten years have passed since the words dripped from my pen with tears and desperation. I had pressed the pages a little too hard, probably trying to get my angst out on paper rather than on a person. Anxiety, fear, and a note of bitterness swirled in loopy cursive on the page. Was I really this unsure? I wondered as I flipped through a few entries. What had seemed like big, bad problems had shrunk in the passing of a decade. Either that, or my discernment had grown. My faith was smaller back then, but it was being forged in the fire of temporary trials and I know now that those trials have made me who I am today. I hardly recognize myself in my old journals. This is the sanctification bit, slow though it seems. Such a long way to go, though, I sighed, closing the journal.
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The water in the stream was icy cold. Runoff from the mountains above circulated down the crags into the creek where we soaked our feet. Mossy rocks formed the creek bed, and I slipped a little trying to find a place to sit without going all the way in. I picked up a small round rock to skip, something my dad taught me to do when I was small, standing at the edge of the pond at my grandparents’ house in Tennessee. The flatter the rock, the better. But these rocks were rounded and smooth, different from the rocks that dotted the hill down to my granddad’s pond. These rocks had felt the rushing of mountain water for years and years. They were impossibly smooth, gradually changed by the stream. Sometimes it was a trickle, I bet. Droughts would see to that. Sometimes the water raged, a stream swelling into a river during the spring rains. Little by little, the little stones were smoothed down. Bit by bit.
I skipped the rock across the water’s surface. Three little bounces across the slow-moving stream. I put another in my pocket.
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I rolled the golden olive shell in my hand again this morning. I’ve got a whole pile of them sitting in a basket on our dining room table to remind us of our trip to the beach last week. They glint in the morning light, impossibly shiny and smooth. Where they lived and how they lived in nature made them what they are. Some have tiny holes in them where scavenging snails once drilled in through their delicate exterior for prey. The shiny surface tells the story, imperfections and all. Their bodies keep the score, if you will. They have been impossibly, gradually changed by their environments, shaped by what lived inside them, marred by enemies that poked and prodded for something to devour.
Treasures, though. I brought home a whole bag of tiny conchs and golden lettered olives and nutmeg mollusks. Treasures because of how they’ve been changed. Sea glass so beautiful you can hardly believe what it used to be, how it started out. River rocks with perfectly rounded edges, smoothed by the force of water.
The apostle Paul talked about our slow path to holiness. We are, he said, being transformed (that’s the certain part) from one degree of glory to another (that’s the slow part) into the image of the Lord (that’s the beautiful part).[1] More miraculous than an ocean of polished shell and glass, more changed than a river full of rocks is the transformation of a human heart by the Holy Spirit. He uses the Word, He uses trials, He uses people, He uses prayer, He uses patience, He uses His presence. Everything that rubs us down with humility, wounds us with hope, sands down our prideful edges and sharp-tongued replies, He uses to make us new. He doesn’t seem to work as quickly as I’d like. But His work is as sure as His promises. Little by little, we are being changed. Impossibly, gradually, miraculously changed.
[1] 2 Corinthians 3:18
Photo by Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash
Everything that rubs us down with humility, wounds us with hope, sands down our prideful edges and sharp-tongued replies, He uses to make us new. Share on X
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.