I have a little bag of pebbles. They’re so attractive that I use them as visual aids for retreats and workshops.
One day during a retreat in Ireland, I spread out the stones on a table. To my delight, one morning I find two of the participants poring over them, handling them as if they were diamonds, and marveling to one another.
When I express my surprise, they explain that they have been missionaries in Zimbabwe, and that many of these pebbles come from that part of the world. They tell me how they used to collect them from ancient riverbeds. They know every one of them by name and can tell me all about it.
Just a bag of pebbles to me. But to them, each one has a name and a story.
Just like people. We see the anonymous crowds, but they are made up of unique individuals, beloved and beautiful, each carrying a sacred story.
—Excerpted from Compass Points by Margaret Silf
Thought from the Holy Spirit – Consider how when a pebble is dropped into water, ripples flow out and touch all; I want you to be that pebble. Vinita, you are that pebble!
I take walks along a gravel road. The majority of the rocks are drab gray pebbles of basalt that have been pounded round and smooth by the gigantic floods that formed the Columbia Basin in Washington state where I live. I watch for the odd light colored rocks. They are chunks of granite and quartzite. They are the odds ones, that traveled far to get here, some from 2 states away. I imagine that it is similar to the way that Gods watches for those who will turn their face to him. One here, one there. I have walked the same gravel road for several years and many times I think that I have found the last white stone, but then I see one more, so I stoop down and pick it up and add it to my special collection. God never stops watching for those of us who will reach up, he stoops low, in love and picks us up and puts us in his special collection. The analogy fails in that Forgiveness is available to all of the little stones and pebbles in our lives
Pebbles…People! Individual, unique, telling a story that cannot be duplicated. The story of our life echoes in the Heart of God and sings of the mercy and compassion that is ours. God delights in all that we are–nothing is wasted!