Few natural structures in the creation are as elegant and wondrous as sand dunes. These crescents of sculpted loess accumulate as the wind picks up bits of dust and sand and shapes and carries them until the pull of gravity or the crest of an existing sand dune interrupts their transport and receives them as the latest addition to one of creation's true glories.

Sand dunes shift and move, grow and change shape, becoming ever more lovely and alluring as the wind deposits fresh bits of sand to replace those which have crested and fallen to the downwind side of the dune. These dunes are not made all at once; instead, they gradually grow into majestic sculptures that remind us that works of beauty do not come into being all at once, but by increments, as minute particles accumulate and contribute to the growing whole.

What a parable of the life of faith is represented in a sand dune! We have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them (Eph. 2.10). Our lives can be sculpted into elegant, ever-changing, ever-growing things of beauty as we yield the everyday bits and pieces of our lives to the wind of God's Spirit. We are called to glorify God in even the most ordinary of activities - such as eating and drinking (1 Cor. 10.31). The more consistently we do this, yielding every moment, every thought, every word and action, to the ever-blowing Spirit of God, the more He is able to sculpt our humble efforts into minute bits of beauty, depositing them in our lives as ever-new contributions to a growing oeuvre of goodness, grace, and truth.

We will not be salt and light for the watching world in great leaps and bounds. Good works are a daily calling; Jesus commands us to be faithful in the small things of life, for these are the grist He can sweep up, shape, and deposit as building-blocks in the sculpture of grace He intends our lives to be. So how ya dune? Seek grace each day so that, even - no, especially - in the everyday, small details of life, the beauty, goodness, and truth of the Lord will, in the hands of His Spirit, sculpt us into living works of art to the praise of the glory of His grace.

T. M. Moore