Geodes and God

On a recent backpack trip we found ourselves hiking through the normal hills, trees and streams of the Midwest. I love being in the outdoors, but I have to admit that when you do as much backpacking as we do, you find yourself looking for something new and different. We had hiked a couple of hours into a beautiful campsite set off the main trail in a pine grove, wrapped around the bend of a stream and nestled between two Midwest mountains. Okay, they were just hills, but it was still spectacular – okay, it was as close as you can get to spectacular in the Midwest.

As we came back to the stream after dumping our packs, I began to notice where someone before us had been collecting rocks from the stream. I was struck because they weren't particularly beautiful or attractive in any way. They were a weird round rock with convolutions on the surface. It reminded me of the plastic brain models we used to be shown in high school science class. These 'brain rocks' were all different sizes and all stacked on the bank of the stream. Then I looked closer and noticed that some of them had been cracked open and there revealed the real value. They were geodes. I had never seen one in the wild. I remember a rock hound relative of mine talking about how he had found geodes in the dessert and how you just looked around on the ground and 'they were everywhere'. I figured he had been smoking something. I could never figure out how you could tell from the outside what was on the inside.

As I looked around, I found my eyes beginning to spot other brain rocks in the river bed. Some were creamy white, others dark, some brown and some reddish or yellowish. As I looked, they were everywhere. Just lying around. I wondered if I had been smoking something. I ventured into the spring water and picked up a few. Taking them back to shore I tried to break them open with bigger rocks. When the first one broke open I was amazed that it had all these colors and crystals inside. It was like a little cave with stalactites and stalagmites inside – a mini panorama of Carlsbad Cavern. It was beautiful. The next one broke with much resistance, and when it finally cracked, it was mostly solid inside. As I hunted more, I found a few that were spectacular, but a whole bunch more that were mostly solid, without the Carlsbad part.

Two weeks later we went to the same pine grove overlooking the stream, but this time I had come prepared with a 20 ounce claw hammer. It was hard to justify the carrying of an extra pound and a quarter for an ultra-lighter like myself, but geodes justified the weight.

As I walked the stream bed, I now had my mind focused in on brain rocks, and found dozens with in a minute or two. But as I broke them open, I found 90 % of the time they were solid. I was beginning to think maybe I had missed geode season this year (that's supposed to be funny) when I picked up a rock that was quite a bit lighter than the other rocks the same size. Suddenly it dawned on me that maybe the ones with Carlsbad Cavern inside were lighter than the geodes that were solid. I gently cracked, and sure enough, the miniature cave within sparkled with color and texture when brought to the light.

I bragged for weeks about my discoveries, and then some simple but profound analogies began to enter my somewhat dimly lit mind. We are a lot like geodes. We as humans have been given certain abilities that other animals don't have. It makes us different that the other rocks in the river. But we as Christians are supposed to be more different yet. As I walk life's road I find that far too many of the geodes, when cracked open, reveal the sad truth that nothing much beautiful had been going on inside. Christians that look like they are supposed to on the outside but don't have much happening on the inside. It struck me as odd that the process of transformation on the inside of a geode means that there is actually less mass, less rock, less of the original stuff on the inside than there was at first. The same thing is true of Christians. There is supposed to be a lot less of us in there and a lot more of Christ's redeeming work transforming us into something beautiful left.

Another thing that struck me was the realization that you can't find out what beauty, or lack thereof, exists inside a person until they are cracked by life. Isn't it true that the real us comes out in conflict or pressure or stress? We can fake perfect and together for most of the roles of our lives. But when the temperature goes up, when things don't work like we think they should, when God seems far away and uncaring, that's when the real heart of who we are is revealed.

So I am sitting with some tough questions. What is crystallizing inside of me as the river of life runs through me? When the pressures of life crack me open, what will be revealed there? Will there be a bunch of colors and shapes in there that point to a loving Creator still creating? Or will I simply look like a Christian on the outside and lack any real transformation on the inside? What will I do or choose today that will set the work of God in my heart free to create as He sees fit? And am I really willing to pay the price for heart transformation – for authentic, real me, there whether it makes me look good or not – image reflecting transformation?