It takes a long time to make a pebble. And a lot of friction. You need water, sand, and renewable, repetitive lapidary motion. It takes megajoules of energy. But gradually the pebbles take on shape, and the colours settle into patterns and tones, enhanced by the wetness. The beach is a place of slowly worked transformation.
These stones weren't just lying around like this, though they were near each other. Two of them were already there, and as the waves washed over them I placed another two from a foot or two away. It doesn't matter which is which.
I had been thinking about community, that mixture of coming together and bringing together that is human friendship, neighbourliness, various people in their diversity mutually complementing each other. So I brought these four together for a group photo.
As a pastor in a church you come to realise there are those who just happen to be there, been there for years. Then there are those who intentionally come, or recently arrived. Others come rolling in with the next wave. They are differently coloured and shaped and they have come from very different places. But by powers beyond their control they find themselves together, and find each other. They are shaped by friction and moved by waves that come from God knows where.
No attempt at symmetry, no tidy presupposed pattern of arrangement, just four very different pebbles brought into proximity. Which one am I? Where and what did I come from? What gives me my shape, and the colour or character that runs right through all that I am? Reflecting on how a Christian community begins, and exists, grows and declines, changes and is transformed, there is a sense of the divine undertow, the providence that works through our freedoms to bring new opportunities, new movements and directions, and yes, new neighbours we are called to be alongside.
So I chose four stones. But they were already there, they are what they are, not what I want them to be or would like to make them. Not my call. Indeed, not my calling. My call is to respect the uniqueness, but also to enable each to find a position and place of belonging that honours the story of their journey. There is something non-negotiably given in each of these wave-washed and sand-shaped stones, thrown onto the beach from wherever they have come. But there. And so too each person who is part of a Christian community. There is, likewise, something non-negotiably given in this person, who has arrived here at this time in this place. The divine undertow has pulled them, and rolled them, and shaped them to this point. And here they are, as the gift they are.
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