Fossilized

If you’re a child of the 70’s or earlier, perhaps you remember those days when small children could ride their bicycles all day long without parental supervision. You’d disappear in the morning knowing you were only expected to be back home by dark.

On one of those long ago days, Kristi Coleman was riding her bike in a gully that doubled as a neighborhood bicycle ramp when she spotted a beautiful rock in the dirt. It was no ordinary rock. Crystals studded the surface like diamonds on an expensive piece of jewelry. Kristi picked it up and started home with her newfound treasure. Somewhere along the way, trying to balance the rock and handle bars at the same time, she dropped the rock and, to her horror, it split in two when it fell.

Broken-hearted, she reached down to pick up what was left of her prize only to make the most fascinating discovery. Hidden inside the rock was what turned out to be the fossilized dentures of some long extinct animal. She kept the fossil all these years. It’s a priceless life story and a beautiful parable.

Looking at the two-piece fossil, I couldn’t help but think of other things that have broken in two only to reveal a deeper beauty. Dreams break, only to give birth to bigger and better ones. Relationships break, only to make way for healthier, deeper love. Sometimes our most cherished ideas are broken, revealing greater truth to which we’d otherwise been forever been blind.

Jesus often said something like, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you.” It was his custom to take old ideas about God, fossilized in generations of religious tradition, break them open and show people the real and beautiful truth hidden inside.

If your dreams, or your ideas or some treasured relationship have just been broken in two take a closer look. It may be that something had to break in order for you find the better thing that’s been hidden all along.