Grit

I plucked a tiny shell from the shoreline and turned it over in my hand. It’s probably the grit that polished it to such luster. Wearing it down, wearing it away. A ceaseless tumbling that left it smooth and beautiful. I would have passed it by if it looked like the countless other shells washed up on the shore. But its tiny, glistening pearlescence drew me to pluck it from the countless, gritty grains of sand that crowded around it.

What story could it tell of all that it had been through? I’m sure it started off bigger and far more impressive. Ridged and bumpy. Purposeful and proud. And somewhere along the way, it was cast-off into the ocean’s tumble, where it was broken to pieces. Chewed up and spit onto the shore, where it wound up half-hidden in the dirt.

And there it glowed in defiance of all it had been through.

There’s grit that wears us down, that tries to break us and bury us. And there’s grit that keeps us from being worn completely away. It’s the part in us that won’t quit, that refuses to give in, that doesn’t know the meaning of giving up. It’s that bit in us that refuses to be defined by circumstances, appearances, or history.

Part of it is endurance, but sand has endured the ocean’s careless handling and been left rough, dull, lifeless. Endurance alone only gets us so far.

The difference is hope. Hope that holds on tenaciously, relentlessly, that will not let go. Hope is what sets the broken apart from the rubble.  Hope is what makes a fragment shine with incandescent beauty. Because hope says all is not lost. More is coming.

There’s a Savior, a Rescuer, who “lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump” (Psalm 113:7). Hope refuses to lose sight of Him. No matter how rough the ocean, no matter how many grains of sand try to bury us, hope is the grit that pushes back and uses it all to polish its shine even brighter.