Wednesday, February 27
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” –Jeremiah 29:11
Most of the shells Reese and I found on our walk were clam-type shells, which, as Wikipedia taught us, grow as the clam (or other creature) inside them grows. The shape stays the same; the shell grows larger.
A few of our most treasured shells were nautilus-like shells, the kind that swirl around in a spiral. These shells, we learned from the internet, grow with their creatures in a slightly different way.
Like the clam shells, the nautilus-type shells are made of a combination of proteins and minerals secreted by the creature. When the snail (or nautilus or conch) grows to big for the “room” it is living in, it expands the shell be creating another “room,” and then seals off the old one. The shells grow in a spiral form, with each chamber bigger than the one before it.
The nautilus-like shell offers yet another metaphor for resilient hope–hope that changes shape as our lives change. Sometimes our hopes need to shift direction, spiraling into a new room in the same shell.
I recently read Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova, a novel about a high-powered woman who suffers from “left neglect” after a car accident. As she recovers, Sarah sets a goal for herself: to be able to ski again. The skis sit in her garage, a sign of her hope, also a painful reminder of what she cannot do. Finally, sitting in a ski lodge one day, she discovers a group that offers adaptive skiing for people with disabilities. The staff member suggests she try adaptive snow boarding instead of skiing, and she does, with great joy. She never uses her skis again, but she is back on the slopes. In order to claim hope, she needed to close off an old chamber and create a new one.
What about in your life? What are the hopes for which you can build new chambers, new expressions, new shapes?
God, just as you give mollusks the capacity to create new chambers for their shells, you give us the capacity to build new rooms and new expressions for our hopes. Help us claim that gift and use it. Amen.