Broken Shells

April 30, 2008

Colossians 3:1-4

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”

We see it happen in every generation. Picture it in your mind. It is a beautiful sunny day at the beach with the waves lapping against the shore. People are sunning themselves, playing volleyball, flying kites in the perfectly gentle breeze. Others are jogging and walking down the beach and then there are the little children. They run into the surf with their rafts. They drizzle wet sand to make their sandcastles just perfect. With adult supervision and with their buckets in hand they squat down searching for perfectly shaped shells that they can carry home as beach mementoes.

This passage is pretty self-explanatory. We’ve made a decision as Christians to live our lives with Christ as our compass. Because of that we make a choice to live in a certain way—based on spiritual values. We have turned away from the values of our society and we are called to live in ways that reflect God in the face of that society.

The last time I walked on the beach I decided to return to those childhood adventures of searching for shells. I kept looking for ones that were perfect and unbroken. They were hard to come by. In fact, I couldn’t find any! What I did find was a sand dollar that was almost perfect. A side of the sand dollar was chipped off. Most people would look at it and call it broken, not worth retrieving and yet I couldn’t help but pick it up. It reminded me of myself. It was mostly together but there was this broken place that would eternally keep me from perfection.

That’s the point. We can choose to focus on living lives of perfection but we will never reach them without Christ. With Christ and with lives that are dedicated to seeking to live as Christ did, we will find ourselves looking like the sand dollar. To the human eye, we will always appear broken but Christ redeems us and retrieves us so that the world can look at us and see something beautiful in our broken shells.

Do you live that way? When others look at you, what you think they see—a broken shell redeemed by Christ? Maybe you have wanted them to see you spotless and perfect. How does God want you to be seen in this world? What will it take to live a life that allows God’s glory to shine through you?

At the heart of these verses are all of these questions from which Paul seeks to elicit answers from the Colossians and now centuries later . . . from us. What will your answers be? Amen.