As the Sand…

A recent first for us, in between a couple of conferences, my wife and I spent a few days in Gulf Shores, Alabama. As the name implies, the town is right on the Gulf of Mexico a few miles west of the Florida-Alabama border. We’ve been to the gulf before, but always along the coast of Florida. In our 41 years of marriage, we’ve visited (from north to south) Panama City Beach, Clearwater, Anna Marie Island, Indian Shores, Sanibel Island, and Fort Myers.

But Gulf Shores was a first.

In many ways, the scene was familiar. The emerald green water…gentle surf…occasional dolphin swimming by…sea grass…shorebirds…fishermen..jet skis and parasails. Of course, there are also the rows of condos and beach houses with a restaurant or two woven in the beachfront. And what would a gulf community be without the city pier, right?

And then there’s the beach. Miles of soft, white sand stretching from east to west.

Speaking of sand, by the way, a few weeks before our arrival, Hurricane Ida slammed the gulf coast, primarily targeting Louisiana. Given the size and strength of that storm, had it struck Gulf Shores with full fury, our trip would’ve been cancelled. As it was, the storm surge did affect the beachscape where we stayed. Prior to our trip, I had seen a video of a crew attempting to dig out the swimming pool at a gulf-front condominium. The pool wasn’t even visible! Turns out, that property was about a quarter mile from where we were staying.

Anyway, the sand.

It was much softer than that of Fort Myers or Indian Shores, which made walking the beach a little more difficult. But really interesting was the way the sand sang beneath our feet. We never noticed that before. Every step produced a musical tone—seems to have varied depending on body weight and strength of step. I suppose if I were a musician, I could even tell you the musical note, and whether it was natural, flat, or sharp. But I’m not.

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What occurred to me at one point early in our visit was how this beach was very much like the other gulf beaches we’ve visited hundreds of miles further south along the coast of Florida. Then it struck me that this very similar shoreline runs continuously for 900 miles from western Alabama to southern Florida.

That’s a lot of sand!

I wonder how much? Go ahead, do a web search and see if you can come up with an answer. I didn’t get anywhere with that one.

But the reason the question popped into my head is because of a few key verses in the Bible.

For example, God told Abraham,

“I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.”

– Genesis 22:17

And God said through the prophet Jeremiah,

“As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the offspring of David my servant, and the Levitical priests who minister to me.”

– Jeremiah 33:22

And through another prophet,

“Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God.’”

– Hosea 1:10

Some folks love math and numbers. They read those promises and start the research. Let’s see, should be rather simple, shouldn’t it? If we can calculate the number of grains of sand in a cubit foot, then figure out how many cubit feet of sand there are on earth, then, viola! We’ve got our answer!

If you’re a web searcher, you’re already ahead of me here, aren’t you? Did your search engine pop up this one:

A single grain of sand found on the beach is half a millimeter in diameter. Twenty grains make up about a centimeter, and 8,000 make up one cubic centimeter. To calculate the volume of sand, you need to determine the amount of coastline that consists of sandy beaches. Dr. Jason Marshall “The Math Dude” estimates the volume of the beaches to be 700 trillion cubic meters. Mathematically, the figure amounts to five sextillion grains of sand. The mathematician suggests that this is just an estimate and the number could change by a factor of two to a low of 2.5 and a high of 10 sextillions.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/are-there-more-grains-of-sand-or-stars-in-the-earth.html

Incidentally, did you notice a couple of those verses above mentioned “the stars of heaven”? The website just quoted asks the question if there are more stars in the universe or sand on the seashores. Interesting question, no? Well, some geniuses calculated the number of stars, too:

Finding the answer to the number of stars in our universe involves generating a mathematical problem of – dare we say it – cosmic proportions. The Milky Way Galaxy has between 100 and 400 billion stars. There are more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe with some researchers placing the figure at about 500 billion. The lowest number of stars that can be found in the universe is ten sextillion (10 billion billion) and 200 sextillions at the higher end. These are huge numbers that are incomparable to anything on earth.

So if I’m reading the calculations right, looks like the number of stars is greater than grains of sand.

Whatever, that’s not the point.

The emphasis of God’s promise to Abraham, Jeremiah, and Hosea is that the offspring of Abraham yet to come (and later, the Jewish people) will be an innumerable host of people.

Think about that.

When God made the initial promise to Abraham, he had one son through whom the promise would be fulfilled (Isaac). Later, when Isaac got married, his wife initially couldn’t have children. The promise surely seemed far fetched!

When God made the promise through Jeremiah, the nation of Israel was in serious decline—same during the time of Hosea. There was a reasonable fear that the descendants of Abraham would become extinct.

But God promised. “As the sand that is on the seashore.” An innumerable host.

Go ahead. Pop “what is the total number of Jewish people who have ever lived” into your search engine. I got answers related to a particular nation or time, but no calculation for “all” who have “ever lived” on earth.

Hmmm. God was right.

As I stood on the balcony one morning looking east toward the sun rising above the horizon, I pondered the endless ribbon of sand stretching as far as I could see.

Walking along the water’s edge, feet sinking in the cool, damp sand, I mused.

Trudging through the warm, dry sand, tuning in to the music beneath our feet, I listened.

And the sand reminded me, God’s word is trustworthy…His promises, sure.