Creation Every Day: The Collectible Creation

Leaves, flowers, rocks, shells, wood, fossils, pinecones, sea glass, driftwood, acorns, bones. Something in us craves collecting bits of nature, even castoffs like eggshells and exoskeletons, feathers and fur.

A recent study found that humans have been pocketing pieces of nature for a long time. In South Africa, researchers uncovered a stash of stunning crystals called rhomboids. The crystals, which didn’t originate at the ancient site, must have been carried there, most likely for ornamental purposes. In short, someone liked to collect pretty rocks. That makes perfect sense to me.

Sometimes more than mere beauty inspires our nature nabbing. We collect what we don’t want to forget.

A bouquet of speckled guinea fowl feathers fills a vase in my living room. Shells and driftwood from the Pacific Northwest adorn my plant wall. Smooth stones from Lake Superior lie scattered across my mantel.

Infused in those trinkets are memories of time spent in breathtaking locations with dear friends.

In eternity, God holds his collection—the universe and everything in it—in his hands, perhaps musing over memories of the perfect beauty that was, the broken beauty that is, the restored beauty that will be. We are mere curators of his collection, pocketing pebbles, pressing leaves, plucking flowers, mesmerized by these mere shadows of the magnificence to come in the new heavens and earth.