But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:8
I grew up in the ocean. I was blessed with many summers and experiences in the great blue sea. Without a doubt, my happy place is the water. I have dived in crystal clear, swam with sharks and other fish, and truly love the perfection of God’s creation seen in His seas.
When I was little, I remember swimming far off from the shore to search for sand dollars every time I went to the beach. Most of us have only experienced finding the broken sand dollars that wash up on the shores after being tossed by the waves. For me, I loved exploring and diving for whole sand dollars. Ones that had not been tossed and broken by the waves. The ones you must go out far to find.
I remember one year I swam far off the shore and landed on a gold mine! More perfect sand dollars than I had ever seen. I literally felt like I had found treasure buried in the sand. That was a memory I will never forget.
As a father, my love for the ocean has transferred to my kids. They both love to swim, snorkel and explore, and search for seashells. As they get older, we get further and further into the ocean hunting for new treasures. Last year, my boys were old enough and ready to swim out far enough to find perfect, unbroken sand dollars. Each day we went out, but each day we returned with no luck.
One afternoon, my youngest son ran to me as I sat on the beach, yelling “Dad, I found one!” When he showed me what he had found, disappointment was shown on my face as all that he held was just another broken sand dollar that had washed up on the shore. Nothing special at all. He handed his treasure to me, and I said, “Son, this is not what we came here to find.” I reared back as I was ready to throw the sand dollar back into the ocean where it belonged when my son stopped me.
My son screamed, “No dad, that’s mine!”
“Son, what are you going to do with a broken sand dollar? There’s nothing special about what you have found, they’re literally all over the beach. We came for the perfect ones,” I told him.
“What I found is perfect to me,” my son said. “I going to take it home and place it on my shelf for everyone to see.”
In that moment, God’s love and grace poured into this simple story with my son. I felt like time stopped and the sermon that I heard was loud and clear, God came for the broken!
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”
Ephesians 2:4-5
Praise God that He does not look at us as I looked at my son’s broken sand dollar. The truth is this world is filled with broken shells. People who have been tossed around by the waves, broken by sin, and buried in the sand. Shells that have been discarded as worthless, but in God’s great love, He sees us as treasures!
If you look at the Bible from its simplest vantage point, we see this realization. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is a story of God’s love for the broken shell.
God created you, molded you, died for you, walks with you, and never throws us back into the waters, no matter how broken the shell might be. The story of the Bible is God taking the broken, seeing the shell as treasure, and placing it on His shelf to keep forever.
Blessings,
