Beach work

‘Sand is made from all those little pebbles and stones and shells being ground down by the sea over a really long time. Eventually, this will all be sand.’

And with that said, I came to the limits of my geological knowledge.

The boys gave up picking their way bare foot over the mounds of coarse beach material and sat down to put their socks and shoes back on.

‘Like, how long?’ asks Jo, ever the questioner.

I think he was hoping the beach would be improved more to his liking, by the end of the summer.

‘A really, really, really long time,’ I answered very imprecisely.

‘So all this will someday be sand?’

As he poked the smooth pebbles and sea glass with a stick, this fact was digested and pondered upon for a moment.

An undulating line of foam marked the edge of the waves on the shore, as the sea continued its perpetual motion. The imperceptible attrition of the land happening right in front of us.

‘Wow, God really did make an amazing creation,’ he declared, pocketing a boomerang shaped stone with delight and scrambling further up the beach.

Whether it was the overall timeframe of beach making that especially impressed him, the metamorphosis of stone to sand or just the anticipation of seeing whether his new stone would come back to him when he threw it, I don’t really know but his response was spot on anyway.

WOW

And a little further on we sang a CSSM song and we did the actions. We walked on God’s beach-in-progress and saw with him that it was good. Isn’t that why he made it all in the first place? So we could walk through it together, marvelling at it, enjoying it and revelling in the sheer goodness of it all.

‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.’

And Jesus says if our mouths stay closed, if we don’t sing it, the millions of stones on the beach will cry out and do it for us!  What a choir that would be.

The beach that won’t always look the way it does today.

The beach that will be changed over time by the water.

The beach that will undergo long term erosion

…but not ultimately to be diminished or destroyed.

Each individual rock, stone and pebble to be broken over time into tiny pieces to make a whole beach of beautiful, soft, silken sand.

Not that all those pebbles aren’t beautiful too, the way they are today but the plan is not for them to stay the same. Beaches are long term, ongoing projects.

God has a plan to make something even more beautiful than what we see today, for me and for you, for us all together but it involves a lot of brokenness.

It’s a difficult process of reconstruction, from hard and resistant to soft and yielding, but when the friction becomes unbearable and it all feels like pointless, painful destruction, it helps to remember what’s really going on.

The plan, the timeframe, the wow.

Then we go back to the car and drive home listening to the radio. Stories of Japanese people being killed in their beds, a priest being killed in his church, French people being killed as they walk down a street, story after story of pain and hurt and the destruction of life.

‘Why would someone do that mum?’ asks the questioner in the back seat.

I am glad to have walked on that beach because I can tell those boys to remember that this world we live in is still amazing. It is God’s creation and he is working at it now, even when we can’t see it happening.

I can tell them to remember that he has a plan and he has a time.

I can tell them to remember to walk every day with Jesus because he is the King and he is majestic and he is triumphant.

I can tell them to sing songs and the mountains, the trees and the stones will sing with them.

Anne Frank

‘The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.’