pebbles

Do you have a favourite stony beach? Don’t get me wrong, we all love a sandy beach and all that it entails: sandcastles, massive holes, comfortable sunbathing and so on. But a stony beach is great in its own right. Our favourite has long been Budleigh Salterton from when we lived in Devon. Aside from having an incredible name and a teashop that serves a high class cream tea (the secrets in the doilies), the pebbles on the beach are perfect. 

I love the approach to the seafront. As you get closer you can hear the suck of the waves on the pebbles and the clack and rattle of the smaller ones rolling over each other as they get dragged interminably out to sea and back to shore. A place to hear the very voice of God.

As a family we play ‘choose your favourite pebble’. Rock* and roll, I know. But which one to choose? Pearly white, reflecting the sun or multicoloured with hints of pink and bluey green? Perfectly smooth or pitted and cracked with imperfections? Rounded and oval or misshapen? Fat or flat? Or what about the one with the hole right through it?

Next time you go to a stony beach try playing our game. Feel the pebble you choose. Is it smooth or grainy? Consider it, its weight, shape and colour. Pebbles are formed over long periods of time; the friction of water and being battered by other pebbles smoothing edges and shaping them, making them beautiful. Where has your pebble come from? Where did its journey start? Maybe a desert or a volcano, depending on the type of rock.

Could you allow God to speak to you through your pebble? What journey are you on? Where did it start? What events of life have worn you down or smoothed your sharp edges? How have you been battered or smashed, ground down, but then moulded and shaped? What imperfections are there?

In some ways I feel battered and broken, worn and ground down. Certainly feeling the mileage these days. But I completely believe that God is shaping me, like a pebble in the ocean. Maybe not beautiful yet: does that mean more friction to come?

2 Corinthians 4 verses 8-10: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

I’ll let the great Paul Weller have the final word.

Like pebbles on a beach

Kicked around, displaced by feet

Oh, like broken stones

They’re all trying to get home

(Broken Stones by Paul Weller)

* Pun intended. Apologies.