(I wrote this while on vacation a few weeks ago.  Just getting around to posting it)

Walking along the beach this morning, the tide was coming in. The sand was very deep and loose, and with each step I took, my foot sank deep into the sand. Walking was very difficult!

I got to thinking of the infinite number of grains in the sand, all the shells and things of the sea that have been tossed about, breaking into an incalculable number of pieces to form the sand of the seas. There is no way to know that number because it is so vast.

Those that build on sand will find it shifting beneath them. Each storm that comes will drag more sand out to sea with it. Slowly eroding the weak foundation they have built. This can represent many things, but basically it represents putting our trust in man. He will constantly let us down.

But if we build on rock, the solid ground of Jesus, then nothing will shift beneath us. Storms will come, you can be sure of that, but because we have built on solid ground, the storms will only shake us, since our foundation is sure.

God knows the number of the grains of sand. He knows the number of hairs on our head. If He knows those things, He must know me, and what makes me tick. What more solid ground can I build on but God, who knows all about me, and still chooses to love me?

Leaving our ship to go shopping one day a couple of weeks ago, while we were in a foreign country, I noticed you walking ahead of me, and not walking in a straight path, but rather staggering around. Then I heard you, loudly talking, with slurred words, and I felt sorry for you. Don’t you care that you look like a fool? I don’t even know you, will never probably see you again, yet my heart breaks for you. You drink alcohol like it is Pepsi, your family laughs at you, but is it really to hide the pain they must be feeling, or perhaps the shame of watching you make a fool of yourself?

What do you find so alluring about alcohol, and drinking it until you are senseless? If I have a drink, I feel light headed and dizzy, and I just don’t like the way it makes me feel. I could never understand why people want to drink until they are sick and pass out. Why do they drink and make fools of themselves, or is it that they can’t remember what they did while they were drunk? Does it wipe out the pain of life, the emptiness of living?

I go on with my shopping, but I hear you and your loud voice throughout the mall. I wonder how the shop keepers must see you, how your family can keep going along with you. I would be ashamed. I ask myself “why don’t they take him back to the ship?” Perhaps you would raise too much of a fuss, and it is easier to just go along with your foolishness.  As it is you keep bellowing that you are drunk, telling everyone that you see, and then you laugh as if it is funny.  It's not.

I realize before I leave to go back to the ship that I am judging you. I know nothing about you, except that you have imbibed in too much alcohol. You are a lost soul, no doubt, and I should have taken the time to tell you about Jesus, but you wouldn’t remember if I had. No matter, I can still pray for you, and others like you. If you were my family, I would not abandon you, but neither would I let you continue to make a fool of yourself. If you didn’t listen to me, I would continue to follow you and keep battering away at your brain until you did listen, even if it took a lifetime.

Lord, what does it take to get through to someone like this? This man is a face in thousands, that I will probably never see again.  Speak to this man, and let him see what he is doing to himself, and to his family.  Help him find his way to You.