The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Sand

But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. (Matthew 7:26 NLT)

Go on, keep going with this song, you know the words and the motions, I hope.  Last week, we went on a family vacation to sunny, sandy Florida.  We were in between Destin & Panama City in Santa Rosa, FL, on Seagrove Beach.  One morning while out on the beach, Jay mentioned that song when showing Lane how the sand just collapses when the water rolls in.  So it stuck in my head, of course.  Then as I stood up from reading (which is just about all I do on the beach and LOVE it) and walked to the water to cool off, I felt the sand falling away under me as the water rushed over my feet.  Ugh, I do not like that feeling.  It made my feet uncomfortable and I would sorta tip-toe away to where the sand was smooth.  I'm weird like that...

Then this brought me to another memory from the past.  When I was 15 years old, my mother forced me (yes, forced is the only way to describe it) to go on a trip with my grandparents to southern Texas for three, yes three, very long weeks.  Now, it doesn't sound all bad really, except that I was 15 years old and had a social life to attend to.  I don't think Jay and I were technically dating at that time, of course, I'm not sure what you would call those instances when we weren't really dating, we still talked all the time, and I had girlfriends to keep company and have fun with as well.  So three weeks in Texas out of MY summer was devastating.  The only bright spot was that my older cousin, Shellie, was going along.  Thank goodness.

My parents took me to Effingham and dumped me out at a restaurant at that first exit and I unwillingly climbed into the back of my grandparent's pale yellow Chevrolet Caprice...the ultimate grandma car.  The drive to Harlingen, Texas is about 23 hours, straight.  (Jay and I have actually driven it...stupid, stupid, stupid.)  But with my retired, care-free grandparents, that 23-hour drive was the equivalent of THREE days in the car, stopping each evening around supper to crash at a hotel...with my grandparents...which brings me to another highlight...meals and gas.

My grandparents really were wonderful people, don't get me wrong.  They were a very well-educated and very financially-wise couple.  But they were also frugal.  My grandpa documented every single penny he spent.  I'm not exaggerating here, folks.  Every penny.  Whenever we stopped and he paid for something, he got that little notepad out of the glovebox and wrote it down.  One morning at breakfast, he gave me all kinds of grief over ordering french toast and toast.  He just couldn't get over me ordering bread in two forms.  It cracks me up to think about it now.  (But hey, we LOVE carbs, right?)

Oh, goodness, I should've devoted more space to this trip and all of its glory because now I recall that on the trip down, our a/c went out in the Caprice and we had to drive with the windows down.  And the fact that I almost lost it when my grandma was driving and pulled off the side of the road to let someone pass as we were flying (as grandparents do) down the highway.  That is the way you pass in big ole Texas, if someone wants to pass, you pull over.  Craziness.

So on with my sand story, seriously, I have a point here.  Grandpa decides to drive us down to South Padre Island and show us the island, the whole island.  It's a pretty small area so we head on out of "town" and all of a sudden, he just ventures off the road into the sand...yes, sand, and remember, we're in the Chevrolet Caprice.  You can imagine that once that Caprice stopped, it just sorta sunk a tad...enough that it wasn't going anywhere.  So there we sat.  Quiet.  Completely quiet.  (My grandpa was a coach, teacher, superintendent...we knew to be very, very quiet and it probably wasn't a good idea to offer up advice at any time without a request). 

After a while, along came our savior, our rescuer who had to have been just loving this...a guy in a terribly beat-up old truck whose clothes were filthy and nearly falling off...and I would guess had I been a bit closer, he probably had an odor of alcoholic beverage emanating from his person (court lingo).  This fine fella told my grandpa he could pull us out of that sand for forty bucks.  Geesh, forty bucks?!  But what do you do?  We are sitting in the middle of deserted beach/sand (literally), two teenage girls and a set of retired, dressed-to-play-golf-later seniors with their Chevy Caprice buried in the very soft, loose sand. My grandpa had no choice but to agree to the terms.  He paid the $40 and the guy pulled us to the main road.

It cracks me up to think about it now.  My grandpa had to swallow his pride and pay that fella forty bucks.  Ha...you know it went down in his little notebook.  I would've loved to have seen what his notation was next to that $40, South Padre Island.  Yes, Jay making that comment about the sand and the wise man and me feeling that sand giveway underneath my feet brought this memory back.  Makes me laugh!!

Seriously, I loved my grandparents.  They were good people.  They taught me a lot and I now treasure that three-week trip to south Texas.  But who in their right mind drives a Chevrolet Caprice off the main road onto the sand?  Even small children know that the wise man built his house upon the rock!