We have a recent backpacking trip where we found ourselves hiking through the normal hills, trees, and streams of the Midwest. I love being outdoors, but I have to admit that when you’re backpacking as much as we do, you find yourself looking for something new and different. We had hiked for a couple of hours to a beautiful campground that started off the main trail in a pine forest, wrapped in the bend of a stream and nestled between two mountains in the Midwest. Okay, it was just hills, but it was still spectacular, okay, it was the closest you can get to spectacular in the Midwest.
When we returned to the creek after dumping our backpacks, I began to notice where someone before us had been collecting rocks from the creek. It caught my eye because they weren’t particularly beautiful or attractive in any way. They were a strange round rock with convolutions on the surface. It reminded me of the plastic brain models we used to show in high school science class. These ‘brain rocks’ were all of different sizes and they were all stacked on the bank of the stream. Then I looked closer and noticed that some of them had been opened and there revealed the real value. They were geodes. I’ve never seen one in the wild. I remember a relative of mine, a rock hunter, who told me how he had found geodes in the desert and how you looked around on the ground and “they were everywhere.” I assumed he had been smoking something. I could never imagine how you could tell from the outside what was inside.
As I looked around, I discovered that my eyes were beginning to detect other brain rocks in the river bed. Some were creamy white, some were dark, some were brown, and some were reddish or yellowish. As I watched, they were everywhere. Just lying around. I wondered if he had been smoking something. I ventured into the spring water and collected some. Taking them back to shore, I tried to open them up with larger rocks. When the first one was opened, I was amazed that it had all these colors and crystals inside. It was like a small cave with stalactites and stalagmites inside, a mini panorama of Carlsbad Cavern. It was beautiful. The next one broke with a lot of resistance, and when it finally broke, it was mostly solid on the inside. As I hunted more, I found a few that were spectacular, but many more that were mostly solid, without the Carlsbad part.
Two weeks later we went to the same pine forest overlooking the creek, but this time he had come prepared with a 20-ounce hammer. It was difficult to justify carrying an extra pound and a quarter for an ultralight like me, but the geodes justified the weight.
As I walked along the creek bed, I now had my mind focused on the brain rocks and found dozens in a minute or two. But when I opened them, I found that 90% of the time they were solid. I was starting to think that maybe I had missed geode season this year (it’s supposed to be fun) when I picked up a rock that was quite a bit lighter than the other rocks of the same size. Suddenly I realized that maybe the ones with the Carlsbad Cavern inside were lighter than the geodes that were solid. I gently smashed, and sure enough, the miniature cave inside glowed with color and texture when brought to light.
I bragged for weeks of my discoveries, and then some simple but profound analogies began to enter my somewhat dimly enlightened mind. We look a lot like geodes. We as humans have been given certain abilities that other animals do not have. It makes us different from the other rocks in the river. But we, as Christians, are supposed to be even more different. As I walk down the path of life, I realize that too many geodes, when opened, reveal the sad truth that nothing very beautiful was happening inside. Christians who look like they’re supposed to on the outside, but don’t have much to do with the inside. I found it strange that the transformation process inside a geode means that there is actually less mass, less rock, less original material inside than there was at the beginning. The same is true of Christians. There are supposed to be far fewer of us there and much more of Christ’s redemptive work transforming us into something beautiful.
Another thing that struck me was the realization that you cannot discover what beauty, or what lack of it, exists within a person until life breaks it. Isn’t it true that our true selves come to light in conflict, pressure, or stress? We can pretend perfect and together during most of the roles in our lives. But when the temperature rises, when things don’t work out the way we think they should, when God seems distant and indifferent, that’s when the true heart of who we are is revealed.
So I’m sitting with some tough questions. What is crystallizing inside of me as the river of life runs through me? When the pressures of life open up to me, what will be revealed there? Are there a lot of colors and shapes that point to a loving Creator who is still creating? Or will I just look like a Christian on the outside and lack any real transformation on the inside? What will I do or choose today that will make God’s work in my heart free to create as He sees fit? And am I really willing to pay the price for the transformation of the heart, for an authentic, real self, whether it makes me look good or not, the image that the transformation reflects?