Last week my teammate, Emma, and I took a little morning run down to the beach. Now, I am not a runner, although I like to think I am. I always start out with a nice fast pace walk to get me ready for the run and then I slowly begin to lift my feet up off the pavement for a jog. When I say a jog, it’s more like a slow sprint because I have so much faith in my running ability I just hit the ground at a fast pace. Not even 5 minutes in I’m out of breathe, dying to sit down, and realizing I still have so much further to go. Dang… why did I start so fast out the gate?
*Really… this has nothing to do with what I’m going to talk about in this blog… just a nice fun fact about my running capabilities.*
So on this run with Emma, we decided to follow the road next to the beach. Running, then walking, then running again, then walking was our rhythm. I appreciated this, because hey, it helped keep me from overexerting myself. Once we got to a far point down the road we decided to walk the beach back and enjoy the nice cooling breeze from the waves. Perfection!
While walking back and listening to worship music on my IPod I began to realize that the beach was scattered with muscle shells. Now if you have never seen a muscle shell here’s what it looks like…
Dark, black, unattractive, very plain shell is how I would describe it. Not something you pick up when taking your "shell hunting walks" on the beach.
As we walked the beach these unattractive muscle shells kept grabbing my attention; and to be honest it wasn’t that hard to miss them because they were everywhere. Most of them were still attached to their other halves and I noticed that when displayed open they formed a heart. Neat huh?!?!
Suddenly these unattractive, plain shells became unique and beautiful to me. I couldn’t stop looking for more hearts and consciously tried not to step on them in fear of breaking them. I began to smile and even laugh out loud. The beach is covered with love. God’s love. And I’m walking straight through it!
I shared this with Emma and she picked one up and washed it off. As we looked at this muscle shell together we turned it over and found a beautiful, pearly center that just shone so brightly in the sun. How can something so plain and ugly have such a gorgeous center?
We are all muscle shells. On the outside, the world see’s all the brokenness, the ugly, the mistakes, and the struggles. What God really sees is the inside of us, our hearts, that he has made beautiful, pure, new, and so worthy of being picked up and displayed on the shelf with all the other beautiful shells. He wants us to focus on turning over the shell and starting to see who sees us to be, not what the outside world sees us as. We are created to display His love just like these shells. When you look at the world as a whole each individual is a piece of His heart, just like these heart muscle shells are pieces of the beach. He’s scattering His love all around for us to see; we are His love. His beloved.
Some shells we saw were broken. Some shells we saw had the shiny, pearly center shining through to the outside. Some shells had been stepped on, buried, and you had to dig to find them. Some were connected to other shells. Just think about these analogies in your head. We, the human race, are these shells. We are all so different and all so deeply filled with God’s love. Gosh… how awesome is that!!!!
He’s opening up the floodgates of heaven and pouring out his love on us. When you go through the day today look at the people around you and think of the muscle shells. They are God’s people, God’s heart, God’s love. Every moment is a new moment to love on them and display God’s love through your actions. Don’t let those moments pass you by. I challenge you all to take a step of faith against fear today and tell someone you have never told before 3 words expressed in love. “I love you”, “God loves you”, “You are loved”, “I appreciate you”, “God sees you”, “You’re doing great”, “God hears you”, the list goes on… take your pick. It’s as simple as saying 3 small words. Accept the challenge.
