While there we spent a day at Swakopmund, the main coastal tourist destination. We bumped into some other friends who took us to a marvelous tidal rock pool, just right for the kids to swim and splash around.
While walking along the beach, I noticed some really pretty, translucent, unusual-looking green pebbles. I picked some up and took them along to show our friends. “You know what they are?” asked one. “Bits of broken glass that the sea has smoothed down.”We hunted around and came up with a couple of handfuls of green, brown, white and even yellow ‘pebbles’. Put all together, they were even more beautiful.
What a parable! Imagine glass broken in anger or drunkenness, through neglect or indifference, no good to anyone, only able to cause pain and hurt. Left on the beach. Then the sea takes it, pummels it against the sand and rocks…and creates something of beauty.
Isn’t this what God does with our lives? Takes seemingly impossible situations that have caused hurt, or pain, or ugliness, or anger, and works it all for “His good” (Romans 8:28) to create something beautiful. And I guess that’s the aim of our AIDS work as well – to show that even with the tragedy of becoming infected with HIV, or suffering from AIDS, that God gives the hope that this will not be a wasted life, but one that can bring glory to Him.
