I stood in amazement as I studied the formations in the cave. Big round boulders hung as if suspended from the ceiling and walls of the hollow cavity carved into the high cliffs. It looked as if the huge stones were put into a mold, secured by concrete, and set in place. I had never seen anything like it. I stepped back into the sunlight and looked around me. There were more of those same large shapes on the sides of cliffs along the skyline. My mind raced. What were those geological dome shaped figures imbedded in stone, and what caused them to form as they did?
Upon further investigation, I had a name for those fascinating wonders of nature. They were “concretions”, masses of mineral matter embedded in layers of rock, one of those minerals being a component of concrete. Hidden deep in the core of the rock was a bone, fossil, pebble, shell, or other object that served as the nucleus around which the concretion was formed.
It reminded me of another act of nature, that of a little oyster and a grain of sand trapped in its shell. The oyster releases a secretion to buffer the pain of the irritant resulting in a prized gem, a pearl.
As I pondered these things, a thought came to mind. Aren’t we like those “concretions”? Haven’t our lives been shaped around the experiences, and the trials that come our way?
I just finished reading the story of a family who endured horrific circumstances and defied all odds of survival. They were tested as if refined by fire and emerged as survivors of the atrocities they saw and experienced. All those events acted as secretions that wrapped their lives in stone and precious pearl to shape them into the people they became. A friend who suffered through many of life’s tests once said, “You have a choice – to emerge bitter or better.”
We tend to base our opinions or beliefs in that which we see, not on what is hidden at the core. Our lives have been formed around events and obstacles that made us who we are today. Within each life is a story, and who knows what treasure you may discover!
