Sand

I always think of God when I see sand.
Always.
It's been like this for quite a few years now... and it wasn't always a good thing.

A long time ago, on a vacation on an ocean beach I had a dream... maybe it was a nightmare. I'm not really sure what it was because I wasn't sleeping and it wasn't nighttime. Maybe it was a daydream... but that seems unlikely because generally daydreams are good, hopeful, and fantasy-like. This was none of these things. (Maybe it was just sunstroke).

I imagined the world with its living ocean and it was perfectly calm and still. This was the world at the beginning of history. The sky was twilight. Everything was silent. The primordial moon hung in the sky, motionless. The world was one solid rock.
No boulders. No stones. No pebbles. No sand.

And then, with an ever so subtle effort, God pushed the moon and it began to orbit. It was kind of like winding a clock. Everything was set in motion.

Light, dark. Night, day. The moon dragged the ocean behind it and the tides started.

...and then the grinding. I didn't know what it was I was hearing at first. I couldn't identify it. It was confusing until I saw the first ocean cliff-face shatter and plunge into the tides. It was the breaking of stones and their grinding.

Millennium spiraled past in a horrific race. The ocean vomited out the earth's shattered corpses and beaches were born. Infinitely grounded and shattered rocks... sand. The the pagination of insane chronology slowed.

I stood on a beach with God and God gave me a task. All the rocks and stones and sand were like a multi-trillion piece jigsaw puzzle and my job was to match them all up and reassemble the puzzle.

...and that was the end of the nightmare. It was an impossible task. The sheer thought of it was overwhelming. It was God's curse.

Every since, whenever I see sand, I think of God. No. That's not totally true. Every time I see sand, I deliberately distract myself to avoid thinking of God. And this impossible task. It only ever reminded me of my limitations and my failures; of the things I am not and can never be.
And nobody likes looking at that.
So I didn't.

But you might be surprised how often in any given day you come across sand or stones.

It was like this for years.
Acutely aware of God, but keeping God at the extreme edge of my peripheral vision. I was fearful, frightened, and resentful of this God; this taskmaster.

It wasn't until I realized that my perception of this God was nothing more than my own projection.

It wasn't that I was tasked with the job of successfully assembling this insane puzzle. I would only ever fail and I knew it.

I was only asked to try. And ultimately what that meant was alot of time spent playing in the sand and on the beaches with my Abba. And nothing more.

I allowed my Fear to project the image of a Taskmaster God.

I try to remind myself this every day.
You might be surprised how often you come across sand or stones on any day.

Just a simple reminder; Come, take my hand and play.

I always think of God when I see sand.