Turtle Shells

I was praying today, asking God to speak to me about how I was feeling. He got me thinking on turtles. Often I get strange images from God. Lat night I got a frog while praying for a friend. Anywho, I was thing about this recent episode of "The Office" that I just watched. In this episode, Kevin runs over a turtle with his car. He feels bad so he tries to glue the pieces of the turtle shell back together. However, he's not very good at puzzles so he takes different things he finds around of office to fill in the missing parts. As he is gluing the pieces on, he steps on the turtle, again breaking the shell more. But he is determined to build it back even stronger than before. Despite his efforts, he realizes that the turtle has died.

Its a pretty funny clip, but as I was praying this morning I realized that I feel like this poor turtle. I have been broken by my sins, by pain, by disappointments. Sometimes I feel like I operate with this broken shell full on pieces in the wrong place and trying to fill in the gaps with things that don't belong. And despite my best efforts, there always seem to be somethings that breaks my shell again and I have to find a way to try to glue the pieces back on. And the shell is getting heavy with these random objects glued on it. Ultimately, if we live like this, it does lead to death. We can not fix ourselves and the more we try the more we will just continue to break it. We can not live with a broken shell forever, it will kill us. In the same way, sin has that hold on us. If we try to fix it ourselves or patch it up with other things it will only lead us to death.

I need a new shell, that I can only get from the Lord. No amount of glue can fix the brokeness in me. As I was praying about this, the Lord gave me this image of the turtle being burdened by this hodgepodge of a broken shell. The turtle curls inside the shell. On the inside is a perfect strong shell, smooth and clean. The Lord was reminding me that this is how he sees me. My sins have been wiped away and he gives me a strong smooth shell that can not be broken. There is no need to glue myself back together or try to fix myself, because he provides a brand new shell. There is still healing to be done but he does not see me as the turtle in the picture above.

Below are some more pictures from the episode.