Heading to the beach on Christmas Day was our family tradition for a decade and a half until our kids married and began families of their own. My husband’s work guaranteed him two full weeks a year, July Fourth and the week after Christmas, so we made the most of the extra time with dad. We vacationed around work conferences as well and enjoyed some pretty cool trips. The kids probably don’t remember dad only having one day with us during those weeks. What they do remember is Six Flags Over Texas, holding baby gators and sliding on ice sculptures in Florida, and their first time at Great Wolf Lodge in Dallas.
But when everyone’s schedule for the week after this Christmas opened up, we all headed to the beach together again. It’s been colder because it’s overcast and a little rainy so far, but yesterday my daughter, my dad, and I bundled up all but the youngest and went for a walk on the beach. We had barely stepped through the gate to cross the dune and Amelia had her hands full of sand, the black tinged gravely sand next to the walk. “Not yet, baby girl,” I chided. She couldn’t see the endless stretch of shoreline that lay waiting for her just a few steps away.
“So we don’t spend all our time looking at what we can see.
Instead, we look at what we can’t see.
That’s because what can be seen lasts only a short time.
But what can’t be seen will last forever.”
2 Corinthians 4:18 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/2co.4.18.NIRV
Have you tried pointing something out to a small child? “Look over there,” you say, and their little heads swing every direction except where you intend. Maybe they will see it if the object is very large or very close or in motion, but never try pointing out something from a moving vehicle. The giant backhoe lumbering along the highway comes and goes before they can focus in on the sound of your voice. “But I wanted to see it!” wails Thomas or Amelia. If you want a child to see something, I mean really see it, you must either crouch down to them with the item in tow or you lift them up and carry them up close.
The day the diggers moved in across the street was exciting because it signaled the start of something new, something big. First one dozer then another, was followed by a trackhoe and a logging trailer. My husband and I stood in the street watching the heavy equipment at work. We were amazed by how much power was required to unearth a stump after having seen the wind topple giant hardwoods, root and all.
When the grandchildren came in at Christmas, watching the giant earthmovers from the upstairs window was mesmerizing, but nothing compared to the thrill of walking the children outside to see the massive machines up close. Climbing around the cockpits and dozer treads, sitting inside the buckets, pretending to shift the gears and levers are the stuff that a kid dreams of, but being invited to ride along, hand on the steering lever, while the backhoe scoops up tree limbs as if they were merely toothpicks brought peels of more, more from the toddlers.
“What I’m about to tell you is true.
Anyone who will not receive God’s kingdom like a little child will never enter it.””
Luke 18:17 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/luk.18.17.NIRV
When Jesus wanted his disciples to truly understand His teaching, He gave them either an object lesson or on the job training, and sometimes both. He broke with sabbath tradition, touched lepers and washed his disciples feet, saying, ”Do you understand what I just did?
You’ve called me your teacher and Lord, and you’re right, for that’s who I am.
So if I’m your teacher and Lord and have just washed your dirty feet, then you should follow the example that I’ve set for you and wash one another’s dirty feet.
Now do for each other what I have just done for you.
I speak to you timeless truth: a servant is not superior to his master, and an apostle is never greater than the one who sent him.
So now put into practice what I have done for you, and you will experience a life of happiness enriched with untold blessings!””
John 13:12-17 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/jhn.13.17.TPT
Ultimately, Jesus gave His own life, giving new meaning to His teaching, “If you truly desire to be my disciple, you must disown your life completely, embrace my ‘cross’ as your own, and surrender to my ways.
For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for my glory, you will discover true life.
But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep.”
Luke 9:23-24 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/luk.9.23-24.TPT
“I surrender my own life, and no one has the power to take my life from me.
I have the authority to lay it down and the power to take it back again.
This is the destiny my Father has set before me.””
John 10:18 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/jhn.10.18.TPT
By His commission and the universal authority of Christ, through the power of His Holy Spirit in me, I have a God-given destiny imbued with eternal significance. (Matthew 28:18-20)
“My old self has been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Galatians 2:20 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/gal.2.20.NLT
“Jesus gathered them all together and said to them,
“Those recognized as rulers of the people and those who are in top leadership positions rule oppressively over their subjects, but this is not the example you are to follow.
You are to lead by a different model.
If you want to be the greatest, then live as one called to serve others.
The path to promotion comes by having the heart of a bond-slave who serves everyone.
For even the Son of Man did not come expecting to be served by everyone, but to serve everyone, and to give his life as the ransom price for the salvation of many.””
Mark 10:42-45 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/mrk.10.42-45.TPT
“We are convinced that everyone fathered by God does not make sinning a way of life, because the Son of God protects the child of God, and the Evil One cannot touch him.
We know that we are God’s children and that the whole world lies under the misery and influence of the Evil One.
And we know that the Son of God has made our understanding come alive so that we can know by experience the One who is true.
And we are in him who is true, God’s Son, Jesus Christ—the true God and eternal life!
So, little children, guard yourselves from worshiping anything but him.”
1 John 5:18-21 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/1jn.5.18-19.TPT
“Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.
Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.
Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy. And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live.
Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.”
Ephesians 4:21-24, 30 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/eph.4.21-30.NLT
We walked on the beach today with my sister and her girls. My younger niece found three tiny shark’s teeth. One of my girls, once a daughter now my sister in Christ, showed her how to spot them many years ago and she’s never forgotten. As we walked, Thomas and Amelia stopped to gather seashells quickly and often, snatching up every fragment that caught their eye. I selected whole, smooth, shiny shells to show them. They tossed mine back in the surf and grabbed another marred treasure. Every person is knit together in the womb in the image of his or her Creator. Life leaves us all scarred and broken a little differently, like those shells buffeted about by the waves, but each of us is groaning in chorus with all of creation to be made whole. (Psalm 139:13, Romans 8:22)
“Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.
For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.
Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.
For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.
We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
We were given this hope when we were saved.
(If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.
For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
And having chosen them, he called them to come to him.
And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself.
And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.
What shall we say about such wonderful things as these?
If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?
Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own?
No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself.
Who then will condemn us?
No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?
Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?
No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.
Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.
No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:18-35, 37-39 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/rom.8.18-39.NLT
“Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming.
Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:19 CSB
https://bible.com/bible/1713/isa.43.19.CSB
“I, yes I, am the One and Only, who completely erases your sins, never to be seen again.
I will not remember them again.
Freely I do this because of who I am!”
Isaiah 43:25 TPT
A Fitting Reply 
This is how God sees us. Show ME Jesus in how we treat one another. Thank you!
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