Walking the Dunes.....

 This weekend I rose early to spend time with God.  I was up and out with a cup of coffee about 6:45.  Sun rise doesn't happen until closer to 7:30.  The first morning I had the bright idea of taking my crocs off to walk.  The outside temp was in the 50s.  Sand temp must have been 0!   I took about 3 steps and decided to deal with sand in the crocs instead of walking in the sand.  My feet where throbbing it was so cold.

This was what the sky looked like when I would start my walk.   Yet the ground was reflecting enough light that you could see to walk after your eyes adjusted quiet well.

Once I knew sunrise was close I found a place to just set and welcome the day.  I love my iPhone as I did my Bible while I watched the morning come to light.  I also finished off my cup of coffee and wished for a larger cup.

After day broke and I started back to camp I was praising God for the beauty and how amazing it was.  

I had a thought.  Isn't our life walk much like walking the dunes.  We love walking the tops of the dunes.  It really is easier to walk once you make it to the top of the dune.   But, getting there is a struggle.  The higher the dune, the harder the struggle.  The higher the dune the greater the reward in how far you could see.

Some times you can walk a dune ridge for a long ways, only to find it stops in a giant drop off.  This requires a choice, do you drop and slide, or look around for a different path.  Either way you have to go down, to go up.   We can't always walk the top of the dune.

We have to choose a path and again work to the top. Some times we make a miss step and end up back on bottom, or worse yet down in a pit.  There are some deep "pits" in the dunes that require LOTS of work to even get back up to the bottom of most of the dunes.  

Some times we think it will be easier to stay at the bottom, only to find we are slogging through the deep sand, and don't even have the view we would have if we were slogging through that deep sand as we climbed to the top.  Many times the "easy" path turns out to be very hard.   What seemed to be the hard path would take some hard work but in the end the easy walk across the top of the dune while looking for miles in all directions would be worth every ounce of effort it took to to get there. 

How often do we stick with our "easy" path and spend years sloshing through deep sand because we were fearful of climbing the dune.  We thought it would be to hard.  We never made the effort to discover the truth about how hard it really would be to walk the top of the dunes. 

We missed the gift of the view because we didn't obey the voice that called us to walk the top of the dune. We spend our life stuck in the deep sand of life when we were called to walk in power an authority.   We forget we are sons and daughters of the King because we are stuck in the sand instead of experiencing all God has planned for us.  Remember, Jeremiah 29:11 says, For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Are we walking in the prosperity that God called us to.  Are we walking the the hope He says we have?  Are we looking to our future in Jesus?  

Lets climb out of the valley of the dunes or worse yet the pit, and start climbing to the top where we have been called to be.  Lets stop saying, "I can't", or "It's to hard".  What happened to "I can do all things through Christ who strengthen me."  Phil 4:13.

What can you do today through Christ that He has called you to do?  What are you avoiding doing that you know Christ has ask of you?   Today start climbing.  I assure you the view from the top is worth the work it took to get there!