July, 2015 | Inspiration and Hope

For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar (the Lord of hosts is His name).” – Isaiah 51:15 NAS. This is the God Almighty, all powerful, the great “I Am”.

Life is like the sea and the waves – sometimes calm and sometimes turbulent, but always changing, changing things that once were discarded and worthless into things of refined beauty.

I used to love walking on the beach in Bay Head, New Jersey in the early morning when the sun was just coming up in the east. Listening to the waves roll in and looking for sea glass was a pastime of mine since I was a little boy. Even when I go to the ocean now in my later years, this is one of my favorite things to do. I would fill my pockets with different colored sea glass that had been furbished by the sea –frosted blues, aquamarines, pinks, reds, browns, whites, and greens. Oh, what joy that was! And then I would spread out the sea glass on a table when I got home and would sort them by color and fill a jar with them to marvel at.

Sea glass comes from broken shards of bottles and jars that were discarded. Broken, the sea then tumbles and polishes them and removes the rough and jagged edges until each piece is smooth. So, broken and fragile, we too like sea glass are refined, “though not as silver, we are tested in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah 48:10). For my own sake, for my own sake, saith the Lord.

Jagged edges soften and get rounder, a protective coating envelops that which was once discarded and worthless – transformed by time, washed ashore, a thing of beauty now.

Does God marvel at you? Are you recognized by the deeds of your flesh, as pieces of jagged glass, or are you evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in you to crucify your flesh and refine you? Are you the evidence of God’s waves, that of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Are you in your inner spirit, swashed about by God’s waves, a thing of unfading beauty now, that of a gentle spirit which is of great worth in God’s sight?