Fingers of God

Today Shane and I walked on the beach at Cherry Grove. We were all the way at the end where the inlet and the ocean meet. It was low tide, so there was lots of room to walk. For a while the sand was dry and bleached perfectly white and it had smooth flowing waves. Then we got to an area that was hard, smooth and damp. Around a tidal pool, there was an area of sand that was heavily ridged. Along the edges of another tidal pool, the edges had a terraced look -- layers and layers of sand, slightly graduated. In some areas, the water had cut deep canyons into the sand. Other areas had shallow rivulets flowing. One area looked pithy, like a pumice stone with millions of tiny holes. Some areas had gentle depressions, as if someone had raked their fingers through the dampened sand. So I began to think of fingers on the sandy shore of our lives. I thought of how God sometimes allows us to hang loose and free -- natural and flowing. Sometimes he allows the rivers to carve canyons in our souls to develop our character or to help us appreciate the blessings we have or to have a feeling of empathy for others with canyons carved in their souls. Sometimes we find ourselves full of tiny holes, soaking up all the positive and negative life has to offer. Sometimes our lives are flat and smooth with very little chaos, and sometimes chaos produces heavy ridges -- ups and downs, some wet with tears, others dry and thirsty. As God dips his fingers into our lives, we have to trust -- even when he refrains from dipping his fingers into the landscape of our lives. We have to trust that if he created the oceans and the tides and the tidal pools and all the configurations the same sand can create under his craftsmanship, then certainly our lives will be no less beautiful. Whatever his fingers are doing or not doing in your life, step back, take a look at the artistic piece he's composing, and if you don't like what you see, have a conversation with the sculptor and then watch and see what your life becomes.