Sea Secrets

if you regularly look at my website, you will see that I’ve added a new range of jewellery called Sea Secrets, made from sea glass I find on the beach. You may have noticed that all the profits from this range of jewellery are donated to Open Doors, U.K. and Ireland, who support persecuted Christians across the world. This blog post is to tell you a little more about the story behind Sea Secrets.  

I have  always appreciated that as a Christian in a first world country, I have privileges that are denied many other brothers and sisters in Christ and over the years, I became involved with Christian Solidarity Worldwide as their contact for the church I attended in Glasgow, and as many people do, I donated to the work of various groups and wrote to MPs and signed petitions. 

I’ve also been inspired by hearing, sometimes first hand, the testimony of Christians who have suffered brutality and yet forgive their tormentors. Clive, my husband, and I have been long time supporters of Open Doors but I have recently come to feel that donating money was rather like salving my conscience and I wanted to make a deeper commitment.  Donating money wasn’t enough. I wanted a connection and I asked God to show me what I could do.  I felt particularly challenged by 1 John 3:18  “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth”.

Since I had already set up Grandma’s Spoons as an online business, I wondered how I could develop something related to that which would be dedicated entirely to supporting the work of Open Doors. I had already made a few jewellery items under the Grandma’s Spoons brand, using silver forks set with sea glass from Ballycastle’s beach and they sold, much to my surprise.

So I though I would come up with a design which I could reproduce in bulk and where all the profits would go to supporting persecuted Christians.  And so began Sea Secrets jewellery. 

It’s no surprise to me that my hobby is jewellery making. I’ve always loved shiny bejewelled things from an early age.  As a child I loved the children’s hymn,

“When He cometh, when he cometh, to make up his jewels, All His jewels, precious jewels, His loved and His own, Like the stars of the morning, His bright crown adoring,  They shall shine in their beauty, bright gems for his crown.”

Many persecuted Christians  bear the outward scars of the horrors perpetrated against them, but their love for Jesus shines out of them.  They are jewels in the King’s crown. 

A perfect piece of sea glass has had all the jagged edges ground down by the buffeting and scouring of sand and waves, and the brash shine of the original glass has been softened to semi opaqueness by salt corrosion.  No two pieces of sea glass are exactly the same.  Here is a metaphor for persecuted Christians. The horrors they have endured may have been designed to grind them into nothingness, but instead the beauty of Christ is perfected in their faithful witness, and like the glass, no two of them will have exactly the same story or experience. 

I’ve often wondered how I would fare if put under torture to make me renounce Jesus. Christians have always been persecuted somewhere in the world throughout history since the early church.  I am in awe of all those who elect to serve as missionaries, often under cover, to support Christians in dangerous countries. They are the secret Christians and thinking of that I came up with the name Sea Secrets, the gems formed secretly in the depths of the sea wrapped in a net of silver wire, reminiscent of the nets being mended by Peter, Andrew, James and John,  when Jesus called them to follow him.

I don’t see Sea Secrets as a short term fundraising project, but more a business which can grow and develop and be sustainable in its own right. The idea goes beyond selling  this range of jewellery on my website. I have a vision for it to become a wholesale enterprise so that church groups can buy a minimum ten  pieces for a wholesale price, which will still give a good profit to Open Doors, but then that group can add their own mark up and sell the jewellery to raise funds for any project of their own.

If you know of any church groups who may be interested in taking some Sea Secrets jewellery for their own fundraising projects, please pass on my contact details.

info@grandmasspoons.com

And don’t forget to have a browse in the Sea Secrets shop!