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On Your Bucket List?


On a trip to Florida, Cheryl and I were walking on the beach and we saw a blue object rolling around in the surf.  As we got closer, we noticed that it was a big plastic bucket, of the five gallon type.  Upon closer inspection, we saw that the top and bottom edges were encrusted with some type of shellfish, probably barnacles.

From what I’ve read, barnacles grow on hard surfaces such as rocks and piers.  But they also attach themselves to other hard surfaces such as boats and the hard shells of sea turtles.  They even attach themselves to whales.  But plastic buckets?

It seems that it’s one thing to be mobile (attaching yourself to a boat or whale) but it seems that it’s a whole different thing to attach yourself to a plastic bucket that is going to be tossed about and end up who knows where.

It reminds me of some truths from the Word of God:

“For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Heb 2:1).  

“…in order that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement, we who have fled for refuge in laying hold of the hope set before us.  This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast…(Heb 6:18-19).   

“But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6). 

While the barnacles did attach themselves to the hard surface of the bucket, that hard surface was quite deceiving.  It was not stable or anchored.  The bucket was also drifting and was tossed about in the surf and driven by the waves and the wind.  And, if all that wasn’t bad enough, the likely end of things would be that some day, a well meaning person desiring a clean beach, would probably simply throw the bucket in a trash container.

The lesson from a bucket and barnacles?  And this should be on your bucket list, be anchored in Christ!

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