Seashells

Confession: I am a recovering workaholic for Jesus. For too many years, I spurned rest, simple pleasures, and the lifegiving power of good stories. I believed that kind of thing was frivolous and wasteful. I thought being overcaffeinated and exhausted was a badge of honor. I used to silently judge people who didn’t work as hard as I did for God. Forgetting that God celebrated the goodness of work well done by stopping. By resting. Forgetting that night came before day.

I am still learning that rest and play and laughter are essential. And I’ve trying to believe they’re faithful, too. Rest is built into the cycle of the seasons, into every week, and even within each day. If you’re in the northern hemisphere like me, you’re in a winter season when branches are bare, and leaves crunch underfoot. The pause is anything but meaningless, though. There is something happening underground, below and beneath what we can see. New life is quietly forming within roots and branches and seeds in the waiting.

Years ago, I was in Tennessee when John Piper gave his famous “Seashells” talk at Passion’s One Day on a cold and rainy spring day in 2000. If you listened to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, that message’s significance was explored in episode 6. I was blown away by Piper’s talk at the time. So much so that I went to the Desiring God website when I got home and left a comment that I was surprised to find, years later, on their homepage with my first name attached. I wrote that I’d wanted to stand up and applaud when he described the couple whose main goal in life was to retire early and gather an amazing seashell collection as a tragedy.

What I loved (and still love) about what he said that day is that it is a call to live for God and for others, to not waste your life but to spend it well. It’s a chance to consider, as Mary Oliver asked in “The Summer Day,” “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Piper’s critique of the toxic individualism and acquisitiveness bound up within the American Dream was apt.

What I have come to realize, however, is that he missed something significant about embracing rest and appreciating (and tending) creation. Sabbath is an instruction God modeled. It’s intended for our good. God made beauty for us to enjoy and for the good of the whole world, including plant and animal life. It’s meant to help us find a way off the runaway train of always producing. It’s meant to save us from burning through resources in the natural world and in our own bodies and souls too quickly. It’s an invitation to realize that the Spirit is the ultimate provider instead of us. It is a summons to unclench our fists and release control, to trust God and be willing to receive.

I’m convinced that God loves my seashell collection and many other things in my world that reflect beauty and goodness. God similarly delights in the beauty and goodness of creation. In the beginning, Elohim called all parts of creation good. And guess what? I’ve realized God has a seashell collection. It’s made up of all seashells everywhere, each one lovingly and exquisitely made by the One who watches over sparrows.

This year, I’m more committed than ever to more rest, kindness, laughter, and courageous honesty. To health and wholeness and simplicity. To giving what I can while honoring my limits.

How about you? What are you cultivating more of in 2024?

PS A pastor I host in spiritual direction mentioned finding Jen Willhouite’s examen helpful as she processed her year and looked ahead. If you’re looking for a journaling tool to consider what you’ve learned and what invitations God has for you in the coming year, you might find her tools helpful. You could start here.

I’ll leave you with a poem from the always exquisite Naomi Shihab Nye as you continue entering 2024:

When our English teacher gave
our first writing invitation of the year,
Become a kitchen implement
in 2 descriptive paragraphs, I did not think
butcher knife or frying pan,
I thought immediately
of soft flour showering through the little holes
of the sifter and the sifter’s pleasing circular
swishing sound, and wrote it down.
Rhoda became a teaspoon,
Roberto a funnel,
Jim a muffin tin,
and Forrest a soup pot.

We read our paragraphs out loud.
Abby was a blender. Everyone laughed
and acted giddy but the more we thought about it,
we were all everything in the whole kitchen,
drawers and drainers, singing teapot and grapefruit spoon
with serrated edges, we were all
the empty cup, the tray.
This, said our teacher, is the beauty of metaphor.
It opens doors.
What I could not know then
was how being a sifter
would help me all year long.
When bad days came,
I would close my eyes and feel them passing
through the tiny holes.
When good days came,
I would try to contain them gently
the way flour remains
in the sifter until you turn the handle.
Time, time. I was a sweet sifter in time
and no one ever knew.