When a little girl wants to surprise her dad with a special gift for Father’s Day, God adds a few touches of His own.

Josie tied her sneakers, grabbed the small brown paper bag at her side, and stood with a sly grin.

Her dad’s eyes narrowed. “What are you up to?”

“You’ll see.”

As she dashed out the door, he hollered, “Ankle deep only!”

“I know!” she yelled back, disappearing into the tree line behind the house.

After pouring his coffee, Jameson carried the cup to the porch to watch for his daughter’s pigtails to come bouncing back into their yard. Knowing she’d had years of swimming lessons didn’t lessen his worries, not after he found her floating facedown for far too long. He sat on the edge of the chair and waited.

Meanwhile, Josie hurried through the woods, stepping over branches while gathering a few tiny pebbles on the grassy trail before moving to the stream, where she pressed her knees into the warm mud on the embankment. After retrieving the glistening stones from the cool water and drying them on her shorts, she was off again, racing wildly to the pond and trying not to laugh as the excitement built. Peering into the shallow end, she spotted her reflection staring back and her dad’s eyes in her own. Finding just the right flat rock, she shook it dry and dropped it into the bag with the others, hoping her next stop would offer up the right treasure chest to hold everything.

After tackling the dunes and falling a few times, she searched the shore, asking God for help. Sunlight glared against a small glass jar resting on a pile of driftwood a few feet away as if God had ordered the foamy ocean’s hands to deliver it on a wooden shelf for her to see. Josie felt a tickle in her heart as she dashed forward, kicking sand back into her shoes. She pulled the jar from the heap and checked the empty container, still holding to its lid.

“Thank you, God,” she whispered.

Before Josie left the beach, she rinsed the jar and the treasures, wading only ankle deep into the water. As she thought about her dad and each piece, she smiled when God reminded her of last week’s Sunday School lesson. She needed to add that to the jar, too.

At the house, Jameson stood when he saw his daughter running through the yard with the brown sack clutched in her hand. Her muddied knees and rosy cheeks proved she’d had quite an adventure and had probably sprinted the entire way. He set his cup down and met her at the back door.

The fine hairs framing her face had slipped loose from the bands and were wet and sticking to her skin. Josie breathed heavily as she lifted the bag.

“Happy…Father’s…Day,” she said between breaths.

Jameson untwisted the sack and pulled out the small jar with various stones and pebbles. “What do we have here?”

Josie pointed, touching the jar as she explained. “The tiny ones are from our bike trail, when we had all those pebbles stuck in our tires. The really smooth rocks are from the stream. Remember when we went canoeing and got stuck because there wasn’t enough water?”

He chuckled. “I remember using the oars to pull us into deeper water and the canoe scraping the bottom. My arms still burn when I think about it.”

She giggled. “Mine too. And that flat one right there,” she said, tapping the jar, “fits my hand just right. You taught me how to skip rocks across the pond to see how many ripples I could make.”

“I still think you cheated. Nobody can get that many!”

Josie bit her bottom lip before a smile broke free.

Jameson turned the jar around in his hand. “I see a lot of sand, too. Is that because I told you I love sitting on the beach to watch storms move in from across the ocean?”

Josie shook her head. “It’s because God wants you to know He thinks about you all the time, more than all the sand on the entire beach.  And I think about you a lot, too, Dad. I remember all sorts of things in here,” she said, pointing to her heart, “and now you have some of the same stuff in your pebble jar.”

Jameson had to look away, staring at the jar as a lump formed in his throat. “How’d you get to be such a big girl?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ll always be your little girl.”

“How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!” (Psalm 139:17-18a NLT.)  

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“The Pebble Jar” is published in the June 2025 issue of The Outreacher Christian Magazine. I’m so blessed! Thank You, Lord, and thank you, Julie Schultz, for allowing me to be a part of such a wonderful ministry!