A GRAIN OF SAND

In God’s time, every now and then He gives us a glimpse of His wisdom, His knowledge and His love.

It is a record of history that from the beginning when He made us in His own image that from time to time God became disgusted with our bad behavior and with our sins and our downright disobedience. He even gave us the benefit of His doubts of our sinful actions in the Garden of Eden when He first witnessed the profound deception as it became manifest to Him that we were not satisfied to be like Him. We wanted to be God!

Centuries later He decided to destroy His own creation simply because of our disobedience and wickedness despite all the promises He had kept. He found one family that had been true to His intentions. He sent the flood to destroy us but finally decided to give us another chance! We are descendants of Noah!

Centuries later after years of chastisements and warnings He decided to visit us Himself to get a better understanding of our wickedness, our reluctance to obey Him and to give us a method of salvation for all eternity. Jesus Christ appeared upon the scene and God then became a trinity. Past, present and the future in the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit! With His plan for salvation God also gave us the power to destroy our selves. We can accept His offer or we can reject it. It is that simple!

God truly wants His plan of salvation to work and He has been working diligently to work with the masterpiece of all His creative efforts to accept His most wonderful gift.

God seems to be speeding things up a bit. In 325 AD the Nicene Council was called and for all intents and purposes legitimized the basic criteria of the Christian faith and gave birth to the Holy Bible.

Throughout the middle ages the Catholic Church abused their privileges of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and used their manmade institution for greed and corruption. The sins and immoral acts of the church for all these many centuries is legendary.

God surely does work in strange and mysterious ways!

There is no way that the invention of the Gutenberg press around 1450 and the Reformation of Martin Luther around 1520 was coincidental. The Reformation to be successful required the populace to have the access and the availability of the inspired scriptures of the Holy Bible. God was beginning to educate and work more directly with His people!

Immediately after the Reformation, Christianity spread like wild fire!

The new leaders of the new Protestant institutions began to vie for positions of strength and power. They delivered the gospel of Jesus Christ but to this date they have said very little about the third part of Gods gift of salvation, the Holy Spirit which is always available to members of the Christian faith on a moments notice.

Some Christians now have the knowledge, and for a large portion of the Christian faith the recognition, of the complete identify of our God including all members of the trinity. He has now given us another gift. This is a tool to be used in His overall plan - the modern day computer and the world wide Internet including a new dimension called cyberspace!

With the dawning of the new millennium God is once again telling us that we can be worthy of His love and that He will go the last mile on our behalf!

Just think! God has permitted the technological genius of mankind to provide me, an ordinary individual among billions upon this earth, the ability to use a tool that is capable of storing the entire recorded history of mankind and to communicate instantly with other individuals throughout the whole world! Have we grasped the significance of this new dimension?

What will we do with God’s latest gift?

Will our manmade religious institutions again become separate entities unto themselves and begin to perpetuate their own images thereby forgetting their intended purposes?

This new gift leaves me wondering about the possibility that God also has access to each and every second of time within each and every individual life spent upon the topside of this earth since the inception of time. Whew!

Could He possibly have the following on tape?

On a brisk autumn day, my father and I were way back on the Cat Face Mountain, a large oblong bald knob, where we had been teaching his new dog to hunt. As we were walking down the mountain toward the Listening Rock the subject of school came up, and I asked my father to explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

"Come here son, follow me," father said, taking me by the hand and pulling me to the top of the rock. "See that!" He raised his arm and spun completely around while pointing toward the whole panoramic view. As far as the eye could see, the blazing colors of the sun, screaming with delight, came bursting forth from the foliage of the trees. Old Mother Nature had truly painted a masterpiece that year!

"That is for all eternity," my Father said. "The theory is mathematical heaven, son. It means that all space, matter, time, and spirit are all related and, to a degree, inseparable. Each and every moment in time as they merge together they create a separate entity unto itself and these moments cannot be destroyed. What was is and what is always will be. I thought everybody knew this," he said while rubbing the top of my head with his hand.

My version of father’s explanation did in no way satisfy my teacher the next day.

These comments made by my father, whether in jest or by design, have stuck in my mind over these many long years!

I stand now on the broad, sandy beach and watch the movements of the waves as they come roaring from afar and break upon the shore - - a rhythmic rushing to and fro - - the heartbeat of Mother Nature; violently when she is excited, serenely and calmly when she is at ease!

I sift, in my hand, the white sand until only one grain remains. An analogy - - I am like unto this one grain of sand as to the teeming masses of humankind inhabiting our grain of sand in a universe so vast!

I am struck with awe and reverence. I wonder at it all.

I am ignorant!

The grain of sand cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed. I too, cannot be destroyed. I can only be transformed. The tiny atoms of each can only be rearranged.

But, I am more than the grain of sand. I think, I breathe, I live!

I look at my watch and measure time. I wonder . . .

I see all matter; I see all spirit; I see all knowledge; I see all time. They are intermingled and intertwined. They are inseparable! Matter conveys spirit and knowledge on a highway of time, guided and controlled by a force I cannot see; yet I know it is there.

I see but I am still ignorant!

I still wonder . . . all of this now . . . all of this always was . . . all of this always will be!

I have seen all - - all matter, all spirit, all knowledge, all time. No destruction! Only transformation! A universal kaleidoscope!

I am offered a part of each. I partake!

I am no longer ignorant! The partaking is a slow interdependent process, and I am allowed to keep as much as I can retain. It is good!

I believe!

I know!

I grow!

Forevermore!

It took me a lifetime to understand my father.

Oh! How beautiful heaven must be!