December 17, 2021

Reflections – Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

Crunch, crunch, crunch

So, what is God up to?

Seashells line the beach in meandering five-foot threads that stretch hundreds of yards ahead: shells of every size, geometry, and colorful hue.

Pristine, unbroken specimens intermixed with crushed remnants of what had been.

All were waiting for the morning waves to lap over them in nature’s caressing but never-ending cycle.

It came slowly to my “dawning” consciousness.
Crunch, crunch, crunch – the sound of boots grinding ancient shells into the sand they would become.
And I thought, “How amazing!”

Shells that were built and had been inhabited by organic, living creatures of long gone.
That living creature’s “product” now being ground into the sand that would wash back to the ocean,
They are becoming building material for more generations of hungry, organic, living creatures.

Lap, lap, lap.
The waves arrive with precise but irregular regularity, calling for the shells and the organic, living creatures.
Come home!  Come home!

And so, each living, organic creature succumbs in time only to be compressed and then resurrected over eons of more time into the oil and gas that powers a “higher-order” civilization.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Step, step, step.

Now it was the sound of boots ambling along the seawall pavement.
Step, step, step.  Step, step, step.

Concrete composed of sand that once was a sea shell built by and inhabited by organic, living creatures.
And across the street stood a grand edifice.
We call it a hotel, the San Louis.
Sixteen stories tall, gazing out over a rising sun that erupts from beyond the ocean’s end.

A “hotel”…that temporary home where more organic, living creatures dwell awaiting their time to transition or seeking to defer transition’s arrival.

A hotel that someday will be crushed and returned to the basic building materials others will use to construct other grand edifices.

And those living, organic creatures (of which I am one) – they will surely transition, but transition to what?

Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Step, step, step.
The cycle of nature goes on.
And the cry of the prophet continues to echo:

“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”

Isaiah 40:5-8

What is God up to?
I think it has more to do with the spirit and relationships than tangible shells, hotels, and coins of the realm.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was, in the beginning, is now and will be forever.

Blessings and peace,

Chaplain Allen
chaplain@nationsu.edu
chaplainscorner.org

By Allen Thyssen
At the Galveston, Texas Seawall
Dawn, December 1, 2017

Read the Chaplain’s reflection, Close to God

This Reflection is a reissue of an earlier Chaplain’s Weekly Reflection.