Broken Sea Shells

Over the years I have been a collector.   A first hobby was a collection of postmarks cut from envelopes and postcards.   An like any boy of my generation, I accumulated a large collection of baseball careds.  Though these were my most notable efforts at collecting, I have at different times collected comic books, Hardy Boy stories, postcards, old pre-1900 religious books, an assortment of things which can only be described as junk, and seashells picked up on random trips to the beach.    

While the sea shell collection never became very large, it had a prominent place on top of a file cabinet in several different offices used over the years.  A few managed to make it to the shore intact, but most of them were battered, broken, and showing signs of more than just one day of being pulled one way and then another by the moving water.  Over the years I came to appreciate the broken ones more than the ones which acclaimed themselves to be near perfect.    Perhaps, it is because sea shells found on beach walks are like most of us.   

Few of us make it very far without showing signs of being battered and broken by things swirling around us.  We may cause some of the things which beat us up, but there are also so many things out there over which we have no control.  There have been many times when I have felt like the broken seashell looks.  I am grateful there is a loving Father who is always out there on the prowl ready to pick me up, hold me in His hands, and in doing so, speak a word about the value of one broken down by the stuff  of life.