Within the past couple of days, I returned from vacation with quite a few stories to tell; and I shall now share the one story which I feel is the most remarkable.\u00a0 One night last week, we had the opportunity to allow our daughter an experience she’d never had before–fireworks right on the beach.\u00a0 We had attempted to see such fireworks for the past several years, but they were rained out every single time.\u00a0 This year though our mission did succeed–and it did again almost fail in another most unexpected way.<\/p>\n
Our night began with a trek from a parking lot at a nearby lake and then down the beach through much shifting sand.\u00a0 We chose the perfect spectator spot, as we were close to the waves but not so close that the ever-incoming tide would saturate our blanket\/chairs.\u00a0 We then headed to the nearby boardwalk in search of snacks for everyone, hot donuts and cheap coffee for me (and yes, I normally do eat rather healthy food but I was on holiday).\u00a0 Upon returning to our spot, we had just a few minutes to enjoy the sound of countless crashing waves before the magnificent display of fireworks began right in front of us.\u00a0 The colors and patterns were truly spectacular, with the beach backdrop making them all the more so.<\/p>\n
As I sat and marveled at both God’s creation and man’s cleverness, the fireworks ended and our journey back to the car soon began, with the beach seeming darker than ever after the intense glow of the man-made light show.\u00a0 Upon approaching the back of my niece’s car with our beach chairs in tow, we then suddenly heard, “Uh oh!”\u00a0 And we turned to see a look of panic on our niece’s face; and she, someone who works as a critical care nurse and even trains others in this area, is not one to panic easily.\u00a0 “I must have dropped my car keys on the beach,” she said solemnly.\u00a0 And we all had the very same thought, though none of us voiced it at that moment.\u00a0 She’ll never find them there.<\/em>\u00a0 She then took off for the beach and I decided to go with her to help, leaving my husband and daughter at the back of her car with our stuff.\u00a0 She and I said little aloud but would later tell one another that we were praying in our heads the whole time we were walking back to the beach to undertake the impossible search for lost car keys.<\/p>\n We did mutually agree to cut through parking lots and walk parallel to the beach as long as we could, realizing that our steps would be quicker if we weren’t walking on moving sand the whole time; and my niece, a permanent beach resident now, was ever-aware too of the fact that we had been sitting very close to the water and the tide was coming in fast.\u00a0 Neither of us felt particularly hopeful as we charged back toward the water–and I don’t think it would be an exaggeration at all to say that we actually felt hopeless.\u00a0 You see, we weren’t looking for a fistful of keys; we were looking for just a car key, as she had slipped her car key off her much larger keychain and then put it into the low pocket of her Capri pants.<\/p>\n Once we arrived at “more or less” the spot where she thought we had been sitting during the fireworks, we turned and walked on a wooden walkway between two large hotels\/resorts and then went right out to the beach.\u00a0 And as we moved toward the water, using only the flashlight on her cell phone, we saw her car key directly in front of us.\u00a0 Needle in a hay stack?\u00a0 I’d certainly say so.\u00a0 Neither of us ever expected for one second that it’d be so easy.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it simply shouldn’t have been, according to us\/our logic.\u00a0 The beach had been busy and crowded, and the night was so very dark.\u00a0 And well, it’s the beach, so the surface, much like our great God, is always on the move even when it appears to be still.<\/p>\n After texting my husband and little girl the great news, we laughed and talked about how we’d been praying the whole walk back to the beach.\u00a0 And then, finally, we both praised God.\u00a0 And I was reminded all over again that nothing down here, in what C.S. Lewis calls “the valley of the weeping,” is too much for God and nothing is beneath God.\u00a0 His Creation here is numbered–the grains of sand, the hairs on our heads, the days until his\/our Christ’s return.\u00a0 This world’s indeed a crazy place and so very much appears to be lost by us in this valley.\u00a0 But, God is the great redeemer from whom nothing can be truly hidden.\u00a0 And from his perspective, nothing\/no one is so lost they cannot be found again–if they’re found in him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Within the past couple of days, I returned from vacation with quite a few stories to tell; and I shall now share the one story which I feel is the most remarkable.\u00a0 One night last week, we had the opportunity to allow our daughter an experience she’d never had before–fireworks right on the beach.\u00a0 We […] <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6VlK3-6w","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}