Have you ever washed seashells before? You know, the little ones that look like tiny screws, miniature versions of the big ones that you used to hold to your ear as a kid to hear the ocean. Well, that’s what I was doing after dinner tonight and I’ll tell you firsthand that it’s really hard. It took me forever to get most of the sand out of them, and even then I couldn’t get all of the sand out from inside their tiny grooves. I stood their dunking and giving each one a good shake to get the first bit out and then continued to sift them in water in the flat top of the Tupperware container (that I take to the hospital each day for lunch because they feed us in the kitchen) many times over to get as much sand out as I could. I didn’t really mind though. It was a good time to think and pray.

It’s interesting, these sort of things always strike me as metaphors of how God deals with sin in our lives. It’s inevitable that we dirty our “shells” with the “sand” of this world. And no matter how hard we try to clean our “shells” out ourselves, it’s impossibly difficult and we can never rid ourselves of the very last grain. But Jesus Christ’s loving sacrifice and His blood is infinitely better than water and washes our “shells” once and for all so that not a single speck is left. In fact, God’s grace is present from the very beginning. Where did these shells come from anyways? They’re God’s perfect provision for little sea creatures that need a home, a reminder that God is faithful and always provides what we need, when we need it, according to His perfect plan. What is man that God is mindful of us? Yet He made us in His image, a little lower than Himself, and crowned us with glory and honor (Psalm 8:4-5, Genesis 1:27). He clothes the lilies of the field. He feeds the birds of the air. (Matthew 6:26-30). He watches after little sparrows and even knows the number of hairs on my head! (Matthew 10:29-31). If He cares for and provides for even little mollusks, how much more will he care and provide for me, even though I don’t deserve it? Father, help me to have faith that You will provide according to Your promises and Your will.

And like I said, it’s not just with seashells. It struck me when I was weeding my neighbor’s yard earlier this summer. Just like Jesus said, the cares of this world grow abundantly like weeds and thorns that threaten to choke our faith (Luke 8:14). It’s incredibly hard to weed around good plants that you want to keep. You know this if you’ve done it before. In the exact same way, as I was weeding, I found myself praying for God to pull out the unwanted “weeds” that had sprung up in my life. You know, it’s really much better, and dare I say easier (because it’s not always easy), to rely on Christ’s power to prevent the “weeds” from taking root in the first place.

This idea is exemplified even here in the hospital in Nicaragua. The other day, we had to take apart a scale and clean it of all the grease and grime that had made it clumsy and sluggish and was preventing it from doing the work that it was designed to do. The grease had been applied with all the good intentions of making the scale work even better (funny, huh?), but instead globs of the stuff had made their way into each and every corner and joint, impeding the functionality of the original design. The scale had to be cleaned completely of the gunk and recalibrated to serve its original purpose well. But a thin film of grease that our human hands could not remove still remained as a reminder of the past folly. God is loving and gracious, but He is also just and sin still has its consequences.

Even what Michelle blogged before about seeing grace on the beach comes to mind (shadowrays.tublr.com). Like Christ’s blood, the waves wash away our footprints that scar the beach. What a beautiful image. What a beautiful truth!

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

I´m finding this to be true every day. God is revealing Himself everywhere and in everything if you just open your eyes and look for Him. He may just catch you by surprise…