Broken Pieces

I took my three daughters to the beach today and just as the sun was setting, we took a long walk down Shell Island to look for seashells. My four year old kept handing my broken shards of shells and exclaiming, "Isn't this one beautiful?" All I saw was a piece of a broken sand dollar or a memory of a conch shell. She must have sensed my hesitance because then she started explaining what she was seeing. "This looks like an angel's wing," she said. Handing me a fragment of a sand dollar she said, "This is a mermaid's coin." A broken clam shell to Chloe became a fairy's wand. She reminded me today that it's our purpose to find beauty in everything, to honor the creation inherent in every living thing around us.

In our own life we can look at the broken pieces around us and turn them into something beautiful.

There's a wonderful book I love called Return From Tomorrow by George Ritchie. It describes his near death experience where he died and met Jesus who took him to the different levels of the afterlife. I like this book because Dr. Ritchie was a very well respected psychiatrist and actually taught Dr. Raymond Moody in medical school. When Jesus tells him it's time to go back, Dr. Ritchie says he doesn't want to leave Jesus and the feeling of incredible and total love. Jesus tells him to just "find me in all the people you meet." And that's what he does. He spends the rest of his life looking for pieces of God in the people he meets.

Today's walk at the beach reminded me that we can find the creator in other people, in a child's imagination and even in a broken sea shell.