Heaven On Earth.

When I was growing up we had a beach house in Gulf Shores, Alabama. It was long before the condos and the golf resorts were built. The house was old and musty with a screened in back porch and I loved it so.

In those early teen years when one gets introspective and broody, I would walk down to the beach at night and lay on the sand. Looking up at the sky, I would raise my hand and touch each star.

The sound of the ocean immediately calms me even today. The smell of the salt air takes me back to when I had no worries and no one to worry about.

My heart yearns for the ocean. I use to say that I would travel to as many beaches on this earth as I could. And I have made quite a few, but there are still sands my toes have yet to feel.

Those nights laying on the sand, feeling the breath of the ocean in my hair, and hearing the symphony of the waves, I would dream about the vast unknown that was to be my life. I would ask God his opinion and I could hear him whisper back in the music of the water.

Even today, I think there is nothing more beautiful than the ocean at night. The moonlight sparkles across the rolling waves and the stars glitter in the heavens. It is there I feel the closest to what the beginning of this earth must have been like. It is there I find it hard to understand how anyone could imagine that this gift of nature was not given by one who loves us so much that He would create such a thing of beauty and life for us to enjoy.