Written:  September 2006

Our family loves going to the beach.  One activity we do, like most everyone else, is pick up seashells.  How many times have you seen part of a shell sticking up from the sand and picked it up only to realize that it had been cracked or broken?  Often we’d pick it up, quickly glance at it, and toss it down.
Time and again one of the kids have brought his or her prize discovery. Only to my eyes I saw a broken shell, yet my child saw the beauty?  For years, the kids have given me shells to treasure, only to be “conveniently” put aside or left behind.
The summer of 2006, my youngest child would proudly bring me his tattered shell and then he, to his discovery, would say, “OH, it’s broken.” and throw it down. (This was an action he had observed me doing.)
When he began tossing the shells it jarred my heart to think, “Is this how we treat people?”  We may see someone a bit tattered and look in disgust. Or we may see someone with a different lifestyle than us and turn our heads so we would not have to make contact with them.
Oh, to have the eyes of a child.  A child of God.  God created man in his own image.
So we may look and act a little different.  Great!  I’m so thankful that people aren’t like me.  We’d drive each other crazy!
After comparing broken shells to how we treat people, I quickly convinced my precious child to keep his shell.  He even got so excited that he started collecting that type of shell. It didn’t matter how perfect looking or broken it was.  He took pride in his collection. We now have a jar of his shells at home.
When I look at the jar of shells, I’m reminded to look at others through God’s eyes, and appreciate the beauty in all.
“Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged.  For with the judgment you use, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.  Why do you look at the speck I your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in you own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye?  Hypocrite!  First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”  Jesus said this in Matthew 7: 1-5
We are all a bit broken, but to God we are priceless treasures.
(Cole’s Jar of Shells are pictured above.  He was four years of age when this occurred.)
 

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