Tracks

I love beaches! Being by the sea always restores my soul, and so it is lovely being down here in Minehead for a couple of days. On sandy beaches there is a sense of constant renewal and restart. Even the most wonderfully creative sandcastles or deepest tracks disappear in the rise of the tide and the wash of the waves. And then there is that magical moment of being first on the beach after the tide and looking back and seeing exactly where you have been. As more and more people come onto the beach it is harder and harder to see where each one has been.

I wonder what it would be like to look back over our lives and see very straightforwardly how we've got to where we are, but life is a confusion of tracks and collided lives. Some encounters literally change our lives and others more gently shape us, hopefully for good but sometimes in not so good ways. I have been thinking a lot recently about meeting Jesus and how significantly that has redirected my life. And not just that, but how that encounter begins to make sense of all the other tracks. It moves 'random' encounters into part of God's plan for my life. I will never figure out which of those tracks is most significant in God's plan for my life, but I know that I want to come away from each encounter having grown closer to God both by what I say and do and through what I learn. Sometimes that's easy, sometimes hard but I thank God for the gift of the Holy Spirit who helps make sense of things and always points to how God is at work.