Lucas lives five minutes from the beach.  On our first visit we drove across Santa Rosa Sound and strolled the white sand beach, watching the sandpipers’ maniacal little legs dodging the last remnant of a wave as it crept across the shiny wet sand, and looked across the emerald green water for the first sign of a dolphin breaking the surface while the seagulls screamed overhead hoping for an errant crust or dropped crumb.  We plodded along, our feet sinking into the mud, leaning into westerly winds that would blow the curls right out of your hair, our words caught just as they slipped out of our mouths and blown away like dust bunnies in a fan.

We weren’t alone.  Pale-skinned tourists in floppy sunhats scoured the beach for shells.  Children played tag with the waves.  Older tweens and teens, their hands and legs breaded with sand, carried pails of mud for sandcastles and sculptures, and gathered shells and driftwood for ornamentation.  Lovers of all ages strolled hand in hand, eyes only for one another.

Condos line the beach, ten or more stories of glittering glass reflecting the sun, balconies furnished with umbrella-ed tables and cushioned chairs and potted plants of the sort than can tolerate the sun, the heat, and the salt spray that constantly drifts over the narrow spit of land between the surf and the sound.

“Wonder what one of those costs?” we often ask, telling ourselves we would never tire of the view and the calming rhythm of waves pounding the shore again and again and again.

But guess what?  Before long we’d had enough and we piled back into the car for the five minute drive back to the apartment.  The first time we visited, we walked on the beach three times in three days, but soon it was down to one almost obligatory visit, and this past visit?  We didn’t go a single time.

It’s easy to get used to things.  When we moved to Illinois for two years, I saw snow for the first time in my 21 years of life.  Guess who was out playing in it, digging tunnels through eave-high drifts, throwing snowballs with mittened hands, and building snowmen?  All of our neighbors stayed inside where it was warm, peering through their blinds at the crazy people from Florida.

A few weeks ago a YouTube video went viral.  It pictured something not often seen these days—a young man helping a poor, elderly woman check out in a grocery line one item at a time because she was not sure she had enough money, and doing it with patience, respect, and kindness.  Isn’t it sad that something like that has become so rare that, just like a landlubber at the beach or a Floridian in the snow, everyone stops in their tracks to look?

And isn’t it sad that some Christians need the example that young man set?  Giving courtesy and respect where it is deserved and even where it isn’t, yielding our rights, speaking with kindness, affording others the right to make the same mistakes we do without incurring our wrath, and realizing that not everyone operates on OUR timetables—THAT should be so common among us that no one gives it a second thought and certainly wouldn’t take a video of our actions as something rare—even behind a steering wheel.  Instead, we pat ourselves on the back for doing these things once every now and then.

We should be like the waves incessantly breaking on this world with mercy, grace, and kindness, whether the shore is rough and rocky or flat and smooth.  No one ever questions whether the next wave will come.  It rolls in again and again, over and over and over without a break in the rhythm, so regularly that no one stops to say, “Look!  Here comes another wave.”  If it didn’t come, it wouldn’t be a wave.

Are you a wave, or just an occasional splash?

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 1Pet 2:12

Dene Ward

It must be a Southern thing.  We have a tendency to call the people we love after food—honey, honey pie, honey bun, and honey bunch; sweetie, sweet pea, and sweetie pie; muffin, dumplin’ and punkin’, baby cakes and cupcake, sugar and sugar plum.
 
  Speaking of sugar, that’s my favorite term for hugs and kisses from little ones.  Whenever a child is in my lap, I will kiss the top of his head every 15 seconds or so and not even realize it. My own children probably have indentations there from several thousand kisses a year, just counting church time.  My grandchildren are learning it now.  And they love it.  I remember kissing Silas’s cheek once when he was two and having him run to his mama to tell her, “Grandma got sugar!” with a big grin on his face.
 
  Little Judah especially loves the sugar game.  The last time we were together after I had leaned over and gotten some “neck sugar” and “cheek sugar,” he grabbed his buddies and started kissing them.  First Tiger, then Marshall, and finally he even balled up a wad of blankie and gave it a kiss.  “Are you getting sugar?” I asked, and he smiled his contented little bashful smile and nodded his head yes.
 
   Children revel in the knowledge that they are loved.  It feeds a healthy self-esteem and gives them the feelings of security needed when they are out there trying things out and learning about their world.  Failure doesn’t matter when you are loved.
 
  And that is why a patently obvious love is absolutely essential to discipline.  If you are the kind of parent you ought to be—setting boundaries and punishing inappropriate behavior from early on—your child needs to know that you love him more than life itself.  He needs to hear those words and feel the warmth in your voice and your arms and your heart.  Then it won’t matter that you punished him yesterday.  He will know you love him and will try even harder to please you.
 
  It isn’t all hugs and kisses.  The older they get, the less that works.  But you can still show it with words of appreciation, pride, and approval.  Have you ever told your children how much it means to you when they behave in public?  How wonderful it is that you don’t have to worry what they might do in someone else’s home?  What a special gift it is in the middle of a stressful situation to know they are one thing you don’t have to worry about, that you can take them anywhere any time and they won’t act up, that it makes you want them with you even more?  Do you think that saying those things might help them behave a little better?
 
  If all they hear are complaints, growls, screams, and great heaving sighs of frustration and anger, all of them hurled in their direction, what do you think they will think about your feelings toward them?  Even when they are very young, they can feel the tensions.  Even when they do not understand the words, they will know something isn’t quite right.  And they will always think it’s their fault and that’s why you don’t love them.  Even when it’s your fault for not having disciplined them correctly or soon enough.  Three or four hugs will get them past a deserved and justified spanking.  It will take thirty to undo the hurt of an angry, sarcastic parent.
 
  The last time Silas was with us I told him how proud I was of him, the way he took his medicine without fuss, the way he sat still in church and behaved in Bible class, the way he always brushed and flossed his teeth without having to be told.  I told him how proud I was of how he took care of his little brother.  He looked up at me the whole time, his attention never wavering, with his eyes shining and a big smile on his face. 
 
  “I love you, Grandma,” he said.
  
  And of course, I got some sugar too. 
  
 As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him…and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, Ps 103:13; Titus 2:4.