Last week we glanced at the majestic lighthouses dotting the coastlines of the globe and reflected on how Jesus calls us to be walking talking lighthouses for Him. This week we return to the beach to consider something else we find there, though much less imposing or obvious.
Driftwood is a common sight littering the world’s sandy beaches. Everything from small branches to entire trees wash up on the shores of the world’s oceans. Time spent on the waves develops the character of each piece often making them collectable by sunbathers, visitors, and merchants. Through this, the wood has been aged and weathered to produce a unique form, color, and personality.
Wouldn’t you love it if the driftwood could talk? Strolling along the eastern beach of Kauai a while back, I came across an entire tree with parts of its roots, trunk, and limbs still intact. I so wished I could have interviewed that hunk of wood to learn its story.
Where did its seed germinate, sprout, and poke through the soil for the first time? How long did it grow in that location and what all did it experience there? How many storms did it witness and was it ever struck by lightning? What types of birds, squirrels, and other critters listed it as their home address? How many woodpeckers frequented its limbs? Had it ever attracted a human’s gaze or did it live out its days secluded in some unexplored corner of Creation?
What brought about its death and destruction? Did disease or insects spell its demise or was a final wind gust too irresistible? How long did it lay on the ground before a flood washed it downstream and eventually ushered it into the ocean? Did it serve as a temporary perch for gulls, terns, or albatrosses? Did it brush against a cruise liner or rest on another coast prior to its Hawaiian vacation? How long and how far did it float aimlessly before finally washing up to lay there at peace? Oh, the questions I’d love to hear its answers to if only this timber could talk.
But what about you? Each of us has a story as well. Where did we begin and grow? What types of life experiences influenced our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth? External environmental factors as well as internal personal ones shaped and formed us into the people we are. The love and encouragement of family, friends, and teachers provided rich soil in which we could grow and develop while each of us has also endured our own storms of heartbreak, disappointment, financial reverse, and physical pain.
Like the driftwood, each of these factors has shaped, weathered, and colored us into the individuals we now are. Our personalities and characters have been sculpted by the events of life. In some cases, a traumatic event uprooted us from our moorings causing us to drift on the world’s waves. Distressing storms of abuse, bankruptcy, divorce, addiction, or being fired might have, like a raging flood, set us adrift far from where we were once comfortable.
These periods of random floating might have been brief or more lengthy before we finally washed up in a more stable and secure location, while some may still be drifting. Having suffered and persevered, we may have lost our bark and some branches, but God has been at work, if we have allowed Him, to develop a richness that blesses others and glorifies Him.
The joys and hardships we have experienced in life, like that of the driftwood, have all shaped and formed us into who we are. We can allow these varied experiences to make us bitter or, with God’s help, better. Even though the driftwood can’t share its story, let’s take the time to ask, and then listen, to each other’s stories that we might understand, appreciate, and value one another more, and recognize God’s formative work all along the way. Blessings, George