Collect the Details

The green-cushioned cane chair squeaked when it swiveled, so I slid through the sliding glass doors and stepped outside, not wanting to wake my sleeping sisters. And I was so glad I did for God’s “Good Morning” to me that day, as I stood shivering in my blue pajamas on the 4^th floor of the beach condo, rocked my world and trumphed the warmth and comfort inside.

Sitting inside, I could see the turquoise-tinted water of Seaside’s beach; standing outside, I could see beyond the colors all the way to the ocean floor below.

“Rock me mamma!”

Waking up to the lyrics of “Wagon Wheel” rolling around in my head, God rocked me out of a writer’s block that morning, a plaque that had pestered me for over a month.  

Get my notebook.

Collect the details.

Write what I see.

So I did: 

umbrellas like blue polka dots on a white tablecloth

the grey-planked walkway leading to the wooden steps trailing to the water

white S-shape sandbar island with 2 black freckles (birds?)

scrubby cluster of short, green, finger-spiked palms

a flimsy yellow flag that was not waving  

greenish-brown threads of seaweed

And as I wrote what I saw, God continued to rock my world, flooding me with love for Him, gratefulness for his creation, and appreciation for those people he personally put in my life. And on that balcony, I was reminded, too, that it’s not where I am that matters, but in whose world I live in that does - His.

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,”  Robert Herrick penned.

A great way to begin a morning of gratefulness.

A Mother's Legacy

(Excerpt from Randy Alcorn’s book, Safely Home)

“Mother copied it carefully. She would borrow a Bible whenever she could. She’d work for hours by candlelight, praying the words aloud as she copied. I wish I would have listened more closely. Often she would rest her head on Shengjing. Sometimes she would giggle with delight. It was a labor of love. Months, even a year, went by when she had no Bible to copy. It took her eight years to finish her whole Bible. Six months before she died, Mother finished copying Shengjing’s final book” (129).

Persecuted for their faith, Quan and his family continued the practice, secretly copying the  books of the Bible by hand, modeling his mother’s example, and passing the discipline down to their son.

“As we copy,” Quan said, “the words of Yesu are written on our hearts” (128).

Safely Home is fiction, but its message is not.

Alcorn, Randy. Safely Home. 10th Anniversary Edition. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2011.

Sunrise Epiphany

I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there, just waiting for the exact moment to enter the world. And then it happened. And it took my breath away, leaving me wordless, emptied of myself and full of worship for my Heavenly Father, who once spoke the world into existence and continues to speak through His creation.   

One sunrise on the beach -- that’s all it took to wash away the lingering haze of yesterday’s worries and to remind me to look for His majesty in the moments of each day.    

Before that one splendid moment when the sun peaked its head over the horizon, the beach sparkled here and there with the lingering light from the night. There was beauty, too, for the stars still watched the waves who thundered the beach and left newly washed sand never touched by human feet. Amazing, really. Spectacular, actually. God, always.  

But then the sun spoke through the haze. And boom, there was light which made me smile, then grimace a little as it grew brighter, until finally I couldn’t stare at it any longer for its brilliance eventually overwhelmed me.

The sun brought colors, too, colors that I hadn’t noticed before when I only saw wisps of white and ribbons of green and splashes of blue. Now rust and red and peach and tangerine and purple elbowed their way into my world, just waiting for me to watch their entrance and give thanks.  

It was different after the sunrise, too, for I saw clearly what I hadn’t seen before.  The jellyfish I would have stepped on, the beauty in the broken sand dollars, the white and black birds that soar and linger before they flap and fly away.

And always the realization that if I wouldn’t have gotten up and watched for it, I would have missed the majesty of the moment. The excitement that a change can bring. The sudden realization of how spectacular the God I worship is.

And the wordless worship a sunrise epiphany brings.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

⁶ And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” ⁷ So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. ⁸ God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

⁹ And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

¹¹ Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. ¹² The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

²⁰ And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” ²¹ So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” ²³ And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

²⁴ And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. ²⁵ God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

²⁹ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. ³⁰ And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

(Genesis 1 NIV).

Broken Pieces

The soft, white sand felt like blended sugar and salt and flour just waiting to be scooped up and baked into fluffy cupcakes, but the broken pieces of sand dollars were the only sandy treats I picked up while taking my last stroll down Seaside’s picturesque beach.

Beautiful, yet cracked and chipped, they were the only shells I saw on the seashore that morning. Not even shells, really, just bits and pieces splintered from sand dollars, then tossed around and smashed some more before the tide splashed them ashore.

Picking up one broken piece after another, I tried to make them fit together wondering if was possible to discover a complete sand dollar; but none of the fragments belonged to the same shell.   

A mile of broken sand-dollar pieces on a beach so perfect only God could have created it.

I kept walking, looking for that perfect shell, but only finding fragments that did not fit together.

But when I looked at the broken pieces in my hand, I realized I had chosen the ones with distinct sand dollar markings, that unique five-petaled imprint which distinguishes them from other sea urchins and remind us that they had once been very much alive. Broken, tossed around, and washed ashore, their special sand-dollar imprint clearly spoke to my soul.  

We can crack and fall apart and break. Our broken lives don’t always make sense. The pieces don’t fit together. And sometimes we don’t even fit together with others who believe as we do. But we’re on God’s beach. We don’t wear the human mask of perfection, but the Godly mark of His perfect Son. And our lives, broken or not, can still point the way to Him.

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”

 (Isaiah 41:10).

Lord God,

May the imprint of Your hand and Your heart on the broken pieces of our lives be clearly seen by others today in this world and also after we are gone.

Amen.  

  

Side by Side at Seaside

They weren’t my children, but two grown women with children of their own.

 Yet their laughter bounced around Seaside, echoing child-like as they sat side by side and wallowed in the joy of just lovin’ the heck out of each other.Sharing their lives, they listened to each other and in the process, they laughed like hyenas on steroids. For me, it was a hoot to watch, but even more fun to listen to.

They weren’t my children, but I loved watching them as if they were.

They made me happy. I didn’t have to see them to feel our shared love -- love as warm as the bright beaming sun on this November day with the waves pounding the beach and the birds soaring overhead and the glittering white sand, freshly washed ashore from places unseen.

And while the waves roared on one side of me, their lingering laughter rose like the tide on the other, leaving pockets of God for me to walk in and wallow in and remind me of Him.

I love my sisters. They aren’t my children, but I love watching them as if they were.      

And God loves watching them, too.