Today marks the 96th anniversary of Norma Alloway’s birth and we remember her and her passion for collecting seashells – a few of which are on display in the library’s entry way – with a  meditation from her book Listening : friendly thoughts from the seashore selected by student circulation assistant Jemimah Fernando.

Blueprint

Those of us who are tuned to any part of God’s creation recognize that there is an order, a design, a blueprint. The seashore is no exception.

With precision the tides rise and fall, patterning the beach with cast offs. Through these ridges of discarded debris, inveterate seashell collectors search for trapped specimens. At times the beach resembles a huge rummage sale!

Beneath the ocean waves, clusters of small nocturnal prowlers wait, seemingly for the chiming of an invisible clock. Unlike Cinderella, however, these mollusks know that the beauty of their mobile transport is enhanced through nightly adventuring.

Overhead, with invincible predictability, the moon dictates the order of events, and somewhere beyond its beams is the One who orchestrates and patterns all.

As a shell is sculptured and colour brushed by the unseen dictates of a mantle’s edge*, so too our lives are contoured in silent, skillful craftsmanship.

God has a blueprint for our lives too, and waits to reveal it in His ordered time.

* Mantle – the growing edge of a seashell.