Broken: Fall Beach Lesson 2021

A day or so after arriving at our favorite beach spot, I got up really early to hunt shells. (Read Beach Lesson #2 from our July beach trip to see why I was encouraged to get up earlier than I like to, just to find shells!) As I walked a distance I was passing up lots of large broken shells, looking for that one that was whole.

Then I came across this one…palm sized, and brightly colored, yet broken.

So I picked it up and added it to the other whole and unusual shells I had collected. I also began thinking about how many other broken shells I had left on the shore, well, because they were broken.

I wondered how often i’ve done this with people. Broken people. How many have I ignored, passed by, and didn’t want to “pick up and take home.”

Jesus came for broken people. He met the broken woman at the well and took time to invest in her and quench her thirst for eternity (John 4). He took up for the woman caught in adultery, forgave her, and told her to “go and sin no more” (John 8). He loved well the “sinful woman,” so much so, that she couldn’t hold back her tears as she used them to wet His feet and then wipe them dry with her hair (Luke 7).

Jesus always had time for broken people, and He always showed them a way to be healed, forgiven, changed and restored.

Do I? Do you?

Just something to think about today. I think about this every time I see a broken shell now. May I not pass a broken person, as though they don’t matter. They matter to Jesus, so, as a Christ follower, they must matter to me.

P. S. For another post on broken shells from a different perspective, read Perfect, Broken, or Perfectly Shaped

Banner photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash