Gift Sand

Even though Ben and I lived on an island for four years, we don't like sand.  Sand has no manners.  It has no respect.  It clings to you and rubs you raw.  It hitches a ride in socks and shoes, bags and belongings.  Sand is a messy house guest that comes and never departs.   It strews its fine grit on every floor and counter, between bedsheets and couch cushions, in the corners of showers and the recesses of the car.  In our minds, sand and menace were spelled the same way.  Therefore, it is strange that today sand became a gift.  

Sand is much more than a beach on Bora Bora.   Sand is a visual promise from the Great Promise Keeper.   When He created the world and separated the sea from the firmament, God knew that the people he created would be prone to doubt.  He spoke sand into existence and said, "This is good." 

Isn't God good to give us something that is tenacious like sand.  Sand never gives up, because it has a duty to speak a heart-jolting message.  Sand was created for the purpose of us to see the One of Abundance, the One Immeasurable and the One Uncountable.  I never thought of sand shouting, "Look at me and believe.  Look at me and see the measure with which God will bless you."  God blesses in the measure of himself.  Did you hear that?

Abraham's promise of descendants as numerous as the sand on the shores would have been null if God himself wasn't like sand.  What's more, sand invades your personal space, sand messes with your comfort, sand scratches everything you once held sacred, but sand will never leave you nor forsake you.   How remarkable that Jesus like sand enters in uninvited with Saul and Zacchaeus.  You just have read their stories to see that Jesus will become such a fine grit in our lives, that when our soles touch the floor in the morning we will start to praise him.  When we begin to prepare our food, our hands will brush his goodness on the counter tops.  When we sleep at night and when we sprawl on the couch, even there we will be mindful of his blessings.   When we think Jesus isn't there in the mundane or when we drive in the pouring rain, Jesus lets us reach into the corner so that our hand might come back gloved in the assurance of his abiding presence. 

God not only desired to bless Abraham, he gave Abraham something physical at which to look.  In the long years of waiting for the promise, I bet God placed sand in Abraham sandals everyday and sand in his bed every night as if to tell him, "I am the God of Over Abundance and you will never want in Me."  How could I have ever doubted that sand was a gift?