Eremos | The Beachcomber & the Kingfisher

A poem by Sam Oakes

Have you sat on the beach and looked at the stones?

Some seem heart shaped others have hollows.

Some sparkle, special when washed by the waves but dull when you get them home.

Have you wished to turn stone into treasure

or dreamt of discovering precious gems there hidden in the sand?

Perhaps at times your work seems meaningless. Breaking rocks, dust making dust as to dust it returns… waiting, contending, conceding defeat.

Jesus has been there. Sat on the desert floor confronted by rocks that looked like loves of bread as his stomach and the devil grumbled; one within, one without.

Yet as he sits he looks up and ahead. For the joy set before him he endures both the cross and human form.

He chose to make us his treasure, when as a kingfisher he dove out of heaven. Plunged into the depths of our world to capture the glimmer of light reflected in the very scales that covered us, humanity made in God’s image yet submerged in our own sin.

Now he walks along the beach calling us to come follow. To make us like him, fishers of men. Giving beauty for ashes, breathing life into hearts of stone, marking treasure out of rocks.

As we follow he leads us deeper until we can no longer go. Then in his death, resurrection and ascension we are caught up and called his own.

Now sit again on that beach and turn your gaze outward, hear the sound of his voice in the waves call you home.

The path that we take is the same one as his, from the cross, through the grave to the thrown.

And our work from hence forth is not labour in vain but an offering of love and of praise,

to the beach-combing-kingfisher-God who was slain and exalted, evermore to reign.