_shell.jpg)
K and I went to the coast Friday to see Mom and Dad and got back today (5-24-08). The tide was low early and we went after breakfast to explore a new beach and look for agates--and other pretty rocks. K kept picking up pieces of mussels. As you know, mussels are just plain nondescript black on the outside, but they are irridescent on the inside. It started me to thinking...why do you suppose God designed it that way? Why would He put something beautiful on the inside of something plain? It's not like mussels ever open up so that anyone could see the beauty inside. In fact, it isn't until they die and their shells are loosened from their home on some rock and broken in the pounding waves and they are finally cast upon the shore that anyone ever sees the beauty. Is there a lesson here for us?
I think it is an insight into God's nature. If you think about it, even pearls are made in hidden places, formed in response to foreign bodies in the host mollusk. God isn't concerned with just the visible, His creation is wondrous throughout--inside and out--He hides beauty everywhere. It is a joy for us when we discover it, but it is a joy to Him whether man discovers it or not.
And how is beauty defined? Mom and Dad moved inland a little ways and now don't have all the rocks they had when they lived in Yachats, 100 yards from the beach. So the last time K and I went, we found some big rocks for her flower beds. K, remembering this, picked some lovely rocks (lovely to him, plain ordinary basalt to me) to take to Grandma. He packed them from where he found them, huffing and puffing, a true act of love. But they were beautiful to him for various reasons--size, shape, color. And as I talked to Mom about mussels being beautiful on the inside, she commented that perhaps to God they were beautiful on the outside too...just as the plain old gray-blue basalt rocks were beautiful to K.
Whose eyes? It's amazing to me that we are so limited in our literal vision. I know, it's by design, but some other creaturees see ultraviolet colors that we cannot see and other creatures hear in ranges too low or too high for most of us humans to hear. Even a small jumping spider does a mating dance that is so quick and so soft that we cannot perceive it, but when photographed and slowed down, and when done on a special platform that can pick up the vibrations and minute sounds, we can see it. So much of God's creation is outside of our perception!! Even if were to look, there is so much of God that we cannot see because we are not designed to...we have to "take dominion" and explore God's creation using our own created methods to see, hear and feel what is beyond our senses.
And, looking at all this from a differnt perspective, does it mean anything to us, all of us who are broken, that the beauty of God's creation, perhaps even in us, cannot be seen until our shells are broken and washed up on the shore??
I think it is an insight into God's nature. If you think about it, even pearls are made in hidden places, formed in response to foreign bodies in the host mollusk. God isn't concerned with just the visible, His creation is wondrous throughout--inside and out--He hides beauty everywhere. It is a joy for us when we discover it, but it is a joy to Him whether man discovers it or not.
And how is beauty defined? Mom and Dad moved inland a little ways and now don't have all the rocks they had when they lived in Yachats, 100 yards from the beach. So the last time K and I went, we found some big rocks for her flower beds. K, remembering this, picked some lovely rocks (lovely to him, plain ordinary basalt to me) to take to Grandma. He packed them from where he found them, huffing and puffing, a true act of love. But they were beautiful to him for various reasons--size, shape, color. And as I talked to Mom about mussels being beautiful on the inside, she commented that perhaps to God they were beautiful on the outside too...just as the plain old gray-blue basalt rocks were beautiful to K.
Whose eyes? It's amazing to me that we are so limited in our literal vision. I know, it's by design, but some other creaturees see ultraviolet colors that we cannot see and other creatures hear in ranges too low or too high for most of us humans to hear. Even a small jumping spider does a mating dance that is so quick and so soft that we cannot perceive it, but when photographed and slowed down, and when done on a special platform that can pick up the vibrations and minute sounds, we can see it. So much of God's creation is outside of our perception!! Even if were to look, there is so much of God that we cannot see because we are not designed to...we have to "take dominion" and explore God's creation using our own created methods to see, hear and feel what is beyond our senses.
And, looking at all this from a differnt perspective, does it mean anything to us, all of us who are broken, that the beauty of God's creation, perhaps even in us, cannot be seen until our shells are broken and washed up on the shore??
No comments:
Post a Comment