*I still have a finalnical deadline coming up in a couple weeks so please, please, please donate if you can. If not I get sent home.Thank you all whom have given so far. I truly appreciate it.*
What is the first thing you think of when you think of a desert? Sand? Hot? Lack of water? It is all true. Trujillo, the city that I am in for the month, is in the desert. It is hot and dry. There is no escaping sand here. You go to wipe the sweat from your brow and feel nothing but fine sand grains on your face. Sand infiltrates your tent and everything in it.
The streets here are sand. Sand mixed with trash, animal feces, and animal carcasses drug around by the stray dogs. The stores here not only have metal bars over the windows but metal bars blocking the entrances. A person greets you at the door, you tell them what you want, and they slide it through the metal bars.
Drug cartel vehicles are the only cars that come this far out. As soon as you tell a taxi driver where you are staying the rate almost doubles especially after dark. I sit on the roof top sometimes at night and just observe the foot traffic. Kids will stay out late and roam the streets. Loud music will play into the early hours of the mornings and by the time it stops the chickens decide to take over.
As crooked and as broken as this area is, you still find people who place all their love and hope in the Lord. I left here Friday morning with a few people to go to one of the tiendas to get some Gatorade and crackers for some of the sick people, even though I was sick myself. Thursday a sickness attacked most of our team and five out of the seven of us were sick. By Friday morning I joined the count but recovered within a 24 hour time span.
The store we stopped at had everything we needed thankfully. Rose interpreted everything for us and the older lady working at the store was more than happy to help us and make sure we got the right items for the sick people. She asked why we are here in Trujillo and Rose told her about the mission trip. The lady said she believed in Jesus and spends lots of time reading the word. She said how happy she is that we are here because the people here need to experience His love. She then said His love and thoughts of us are more in number than the sand of the sea.
As soon as Rose interpreted what the lady said and the words “sand of the sea” were spoken all I could do was look around at all the sand. Sand to me is one of those irritating things that is impossible to rid yourself of, and you can’t escape here. The irony is that God’s love for us is exactly like that sand. His love is unescapable and no matter what you do you can’t rid yourself of His love. Along with sand being impossible to count so is His love for us; His love is infinite.
The “sand of the sea” is referenced several times throughout the Bible. First in Genesis 32:12, where it states the “sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for multitude.” In Psalms 139:18 the thoughts Jesus has for us “would be more in number than the sand.” In Hebrews 11:12 it talks about the decedents of Abraham being as “innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.”
If you picked up just a handful of sand it would seem like an infinite number to try and count, and that is only a handful. When I was a child and my dad would tuck me into bed at night I would tell him that I love him “more than all the stars in the sky and the grains of sand in the world.” I always thought that was a love that cannot be counted, it is infinite. God’s love for us is so much more than that though. It literally is immeasurable in an absolutely beautiful way.
Next time you see sand imagine trying to count all the grains of it and remind yourself that God’s love for you is like that sand…it cannot be numbered due to its multitude.
