What Are We Made Of?

Monday Ministerial Musings

By Rev. Mark William Ennis

2021 Blog Number 24

June 14, 2021

What Are We Made Of?

Recently, for reasons known only to God, my attention was drawn toward a rock that I keep on the desk of my home office. This rock has no specific significance other than I like it and am fascinated when I look at it. I picked it up on the beach in Florida while on a visit to my wife’s uncle and aunt.

Now, generally I am not very interested in rocks. I took one geology class in my life and was intrigued by volcanos and earthquakes but rocks did not particularly interest me. This rock, however, is different. It is a coquina rock. These rocks are rocks that are made up almost entirely of the shells of shellfish, or material that is left behind such creatures. Overtime, these various objects cement together to form a rock which looks like no other type of rock.

When I look at this rock, I am not seeing a homogenous rock in which one end is similar to another. No, every part of this rock is quite unique to the other parts. Looking carefully, you can see some of the former objects that came together to form the rock, but in themselves would never have looked so interesting. Yes, all the objects had their own identity and they formed a mosaic.

This rock reminds me of my neighborhood growing up. All of the older people were German. The younger ones were Irish and Eastern European. The real newcomers were the Italians. Yet, we all lived together, professed a Christian faith and were proud to live on Beach street, a block that we thought was the best place in the world.

Beach Street then was really a microcosm of our Nation now. We are a mosaic of different cultures, each maintaining individual identity, and yet glued together by forces of nature to become something new. Do we resist this or celebrate this? My Coquina rock would not be as beautiful as it is without so many species donating of themselves to form it. Our nation, also, would not be as strong and beautiful without the contributions of so many people from so many places.

Let’s celebrate the Coquina rock that we have formed.

#ClintonAvenueReformedChurch                         #ReformedChurchInAmerica                    

#PastorMarkAuthordotcom                                   

#BergenfieldNJ

#CoquinaRocks                                                        #BeachStreetJerseyCity

#Mosaics                                                                  

#Ethnicities

To read more of Pastor Mark’s writings, please order a copy of his book: https://deepriverbooks.com/books/the-circle-of-seven/