little pieces of sand

I said it was coming, so here it is. I promise, I deliver. Even if it is almost two weeks later.

This summer has been one of spiritual... dryness. Like a dessert. Well, maybe not quite a dessert. How about this: it has been like sand on a beach. There I am, a little piece of sand. Very tiny, seemingly insignificant, and surrounded by ten billion other little pieces of sand. We're all roasting on the beach, getting stepped on, tossed around, stabbed by shovels, and goodness knows what else. It's not so great being a little piece of sand on the beach. Sometimes you get so irked by all the annoying things people are doing to you, you heat up and might actually hurt people who want to spend time with you. Not good.

Being a little piece of sand, almost all you can see around you are the other little pieces of hot, dry sand. You might even forget there is a vast ocean just a hop and a skip away from you - cool, refreshing, quenching. A little piece of hot, dry sand could get lost in something as breathtaking as that... if only it could find it. Sometimes a little piece of sand might be lucky enough to get a taste of the ocean. Perhaps some spray from a crashing wave showers the nearby shore, or maybe a bucket of water is brought up by an eager child, yearning to create something beautiful out of little pieces of sand. Unfortunately, if the little pieces of sand aren't constantly surrounded by the moisture of the ocean, they dry up again in the sweltering heat of the sun and are just as they were before. Bummer.

The thing is, the ocean is always, continually, relentlessly reaching out to the little pieces of sand. Wave after wave, if pushes forward. Some little pieces of sand get swept into its power, others try their best to have the best of both worlds... they stay right on the edge where they can continually dry out and get wet again. Some pieces of sand don't even know there's an ocean.

I'm a little piece of sand that is stuck in the middle. I've tasted the salt of the ocean, I've rested in its cool comforts. But... over time, I have dried out. I know about the ocean, and I know how much I love it. I want to return to it. As the ocean reaches out to me, the wind pushes me away from it and I dry out a little more. The wind is a mean, mysterious trick. Sometimes it pushes you away, sometimes it pulls you closer. It can be a friend or an enemy. Lately, it has been my enemy. What is clear to me is that I need the ocean; I don't like being hot and dried out. What isn't clear to me is how I'm going to get there. Unless the wind changes, I think I'm going to need help from something or someone. I think the first thing I should probably look for is other little pieces of sand that have been soaked by the ocean. If I surround myself with them, I'll be one step closer to getting soaked too.

I don't know if all that makes a whole lot of sense. It honestly just popped into my head right here, right now. It made sense to me, so I thought I'd share it.

The truth of the matter is I am lacking a good, crazy-for-Christ church family up here in Cooperstown, and in the absence of such I have fallen away from the fervor I used to have. I don't even know when was the last time I prayed for real. How sad is that? I had big plans for the summer. I was going to keep up with my devotions, find a good church no matter how far I had to drive, so on and so forth. Now I find myself actually grumbling in my heart as I go to church on Sunday morning, because most of what I do when I am there is focus on myself and my unmet needs instead of focusing on the only One who can truly satisfy them. I am eagerly looking forward to reconnecting with Aletheia and my Jesus-lovin' friends when I go back to Harrisonburg. They have been such a blessing in my life, and I think they are just the wet sand that I need right now.

Coming up: 46hrs in NYC
Countdown to take-off: 36 days

p.s. 319 pages to go in the brick! and then an 8-10 page paper...