Metaphorically speaking

Isn't God funny with timing - a rubbish truck even appeared just as I took the photo.  How symbolic ;) 

During the months of September to about March, the beach by our house is just magnificent. Daily, people come and bask in it's glory as they swim in crystal clear water and walk along the soft white sand. Twenty three years of living around the corner and I can still appreciate watching people be taken aback and relaxing in the calm atmoshphere. When the sun sets - it's simply glorious and people gather together or find spots alone by themselves to just sit and take it all in.


For me, the beach is a place that truly displays a snippet of the wonderous glory of God.



However, this morning as I walked along the beach, I was reminded that the beach doesn't hold out such beautiful attraction all year round. Instead, each year from around April to October, the beach undergoes an intense season of ruggedness as it is shaped and formed by the winter winds and waves. Seaweed is purged out onto the beach, large ditches appear in the sand and the wind makes it unbearable to even be down there. The haven of rest becomes an uninhibited eyesore! 

This morning, I came to accept that the beach was now in her season of change.


As I pondered the latest things in my life that I wished to be rid of, I was reminded of a revelation I had in Grade 11, that we too, continually undergo seasons of reshaping, sifting and transforming as we are transformed into the image of Christ. In my metaphorically - orientated state of mind, I will attempt to clearly draw paralells between the seasons of the beach and the seasons (daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly) of the believer.

As we continually surrender our lives to Christ, they become a glorious place for people to rest and to behold the beauty of Christ in. Christ lights the wick of our lives and, all for His glory, people are taken aback at the light and life Christ offers. Just think of your heroes of the faith.
However, our hearts are also deep oceans that hold sin, and other such 'eyesores', that God in His jealous love for us will not allow to remain hidden. Our lives, like the beach, become a place where God must purge the things that we didn't even realise (or chose not to realise) were there.
The tide comes up, the wind lashes around the sand dunes and we feel our lives become rugged, unglorious, unattractive - we have been exposed and are not much to look at all. 
Much more importantly, however, we are sobered to realise that we are inherently creatures of the flesh that must daily take up our cross and kill the sin the threatens mastery over our souls. 

However, just as the winter months pass, so the wind and the waves begin to transform the beach again into a previous glory.  September hints signs of a new season as the waves drag the seaweed back into the ocean and the wind flattens out the sand dunes.
So to it is also, in our human condition as we walk on in deep relationship with Christ. As we die to all that is purged into our consciosness, we can remember that Christ redeemed us from death and He now seeks to transform us into His glorious image.

Praise be to God, who always leads us into triumph through Christ Jesus! 

Sin is not our master, we don't need to be ashamed of the flesh anymore, but we are victorious believers, transformed lives who bear Christ's image. The season has changed! The flesh is gone, new life has come.

 In seeking to know Christ more fully, we will constantly undergoe a continual cycle of living in a glorious, intimate relationship with Christ, to being acutely aware of the rotteness of flesh and sin. It's unfomfortable, ugly and shameful, but we must die to it and offer it up to Him. The cycle then continues as He reshapes us - sifting out the ugly and transforming us into the glorious likeness of His Son. 


May we never stall in our relationship with Christ. May we be constantly allured to his depths and mysteries.  May we never become apathetic when sin is thrown up onto the beach of our lives, but may we with fear and trembling die to it and allow Christ to reshape us again, until we are transformed fully into his glorious image. 

Romans 8.21
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God". 

Metaphorically Speaking.

Sept-March, the same beach