
This is a most precious shell.
It looks like it would be a very cheap souvenir and yes, the magnet is too small to hold it on the fridge and the colours are quite loud.
The story behind this shell though is what gives it its worth.
We were in Thailand a month ago. We got a bargain last minute deal and took off. Thailand is a rough kind of paradise.
A little girl approached us, while we were eating an evening meal with a basket of things she was selling. She had beautiful big brown eyes, just a bit taller than the table, she didn’t look miserable or sad in fact there was a vibrancy about her that I struggled to understand.
We chatted some time, and my husband said to her “you choose something for me and I’ll buy it from you”. She pulled out a shell similar to this one and said I think this is very pretty, so my husband gave her some money. We didn’t get her name, but she said she was ten years old and couldn’t imagine how far away England was.
As she left our table to go to the next, my heart broke that at ten years old she was scouring restaurants late at night selling trinkets. Yet before I could even say to my husband a word about what had just happened, the little girl reappeared at the side of me and popped another shell in front of me, “this ones for you” she whispered and disappeared as quickly as she’d arrived.
There’s so much to be taken from this story, I’ve prayed so much about what God wanted me to see in this little girl.
But I think one thing was this….
How Our God maybe looks at the little insignificant offerings we give to Him.
Like those days when we arrive at Mass empty, when we are distracted, when we fall asleep exhausted half way through a decade, when everything in us wants to offer our whole life, but we are struggling with just the choice in that very minute.
The shell is priceless. It has more value than if this beautiful soul had given me millions of pounds, all because of the intention of the giver. I think therefore how much more God, who knows every movement of our hearts, must rejoice in that we picked up the Rosary, that we showed up at Mass, that the desire to give Him our lives is the cause of the frustration that sometimes we fail.
There is nothing God needs from us, so when we give all we can, no matter how small and unworthy the gift, I have now, the smallest understanding of how it’s received.