For as long as I can remember, I have loved the beach.  I love the sound of waves breaking on the shore.  I love the power and sound of big surf (as along as I am far enough away to not get pounded by it).  I love how sunlight sparkles off of water.  I love the many colors of water – from the milky blue gray of glacial-fed rivers, to the emerald green of freshwater pools, and to the deep azure blue of tropical beaches.

One of my favorite beaches is a long stretch of sand in the quiet town of Gearhart, Oregon, which is near the bustling town of Seaside.  While cars and trucks can drive on part of the beach in Gearhart, the other part of the beach is restricted to foot traffic only and is marked “restricted” by a large sign.  Last summer, my husband and I were taking a morning walk along the quiet beach when we spotted a motorized vehicle heading our way.  In all my years of walking along that beach I had never seen a car or truck there before.  As we walked toward the vehicle, it became apparent that it was a very large camper and that it had driven well past the warning sign.  At some point, the camper stopped and then it turned and stopped moving.  They were stuck.  As we got closer, I watched as two people walked toward the camper and then pushed on the hood of the camper.  Nothing happened.  I knew that the low tide had passed about an hour ago so the tide was definitely coming back up, and I had concerns about the camper in the rising water.

I have some fuzzy childhood memories of my dad helping some people get their car out of some sand at the beach with our station wagon – and then getting stuck himself with nobody to help.  What’s needed to get out of sand is traction.  It’s hard to get traction in soft sand.  And a vehicle as large as a camper?  Surely a big tow truck for pulling big trucks would be needed.

But a funny thing happened.  I kept hearing the phrases “faith as small as a mustard seed”, “Good Samaritan”, and “Neighbors” repeating themselves, over and over again in my head as I walked toward the camper.  What was that about?  I thought the mustard seed story was about growing big plants from small seeds in good soil.  I said to my husband something about the tide changing and that the camper would probably be really in trouble because the camper was stuck below the high tide mark on the sand.  I vaguely heard my husband say, “well, we can’t do anything to help them, they are stuck pretty good.”

The funny thing was, at that point, I didn’t feel like I was in charge of my body anymore.  As my husband walked on, I found myself walking toward the camper and observing that the tires of the camper were partially buried in sand.  They must have already tried to get out by going forwards and backwards.  I glanced in the front window of the camper and saw some children and a woman inside.  Outside, I saw the two women who had tried to push the camper and one of them was talking on a cell phone.  I saw a man with short, wavy dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard.  He looked agitated, and I asked him about the camper.  In heavily accented English he explained that he had driven down the beach without seeing the sign and had been told that he had to turn around, and when he tried to turn around, the camper got stuck in the sand.  He shared that his family was on vacation and that they were touring the west coast of the U.S.  In response to a question by me, he explained that, yes, he had tried to move the camper by going forward and backward but they were truly stuck now.

I was looking at the sand around the camper tires when I vaguely heard the woman on the phone say to the man, “nobody in town has a tow truck big enough to pull a motorhome out from the sand.”  The man looked straight ahead and said nothing, looking very distressed and deep in thought.  I kept thinking about this family and their camper, about being stuck in the sand, and surrounded by the rising tide.

The town police officer showed up in his car.  The woman with the phone walked over to him, but there didn’t appear to be anything the police officer could do either.

My whole soul screamed inside of me the words “do something!”  I looked at the camper’s tires again and I heard myself say to the man, “excuse me sir, do your children have any beach buckets or beach toys or shovels?”  And he looked at me with a puzzled look on his face.  And I said, “You know shovels?  Bucket?”  And I made some scooping motions with my arms.  “We need to move the sand away from the tires so we can try to push you out.”  And I motioned that we needed to push him back toward the harder packed sand.  I have no idea where that suggestion came from.  I have a vague recollection that a voice said in my head had said, “it might be easier to push the camper toward the ocean if we could get that sand out from the back of the tires so when you push backwards you won’t have to roll it over those small mounds of sand.”  He quickly talked to his wife in a foreign language that I didn’t understand.  The woman with the cell phone said to him, “yeah maybe a shovel?”

The man got out of the camper and got down on his belly and began scooping the sand away from the camper tires with his arms.  I said to myself, “well that works just as well” as the man quickly got the sand out from behind all of the camper’s tires.  When he was done, he got back into the seat of the camper.  I found myself, my husband, the two women positioned ourselves at the front of the camper and we began to push as the engine of the camper roared and tried to reverse out from where it was stuck.  The camper’s grill was spongy and soft to my surprise, not a good place to push from.  I felt the camper give a little and then nothing.   We stopped pushing.  I heard myself say, “darn, I think we almost had it moving there.”  I heard somebody else say, “the police officer is laughing at us.”

I stood up and looked at the family inside the camper.  I couldn’t see the police officer, but I clasped my hands, closed my eyes, and began to pray.  I prayed something on the order of, “Almighty and Powerful God, if it is your will, please help us be strong enough to move this camper to get this family on their way.  Amen.”

The man talked again to his wife and she got out of the camper and stood by on the side of the camper, not even trying to help push.  I thought, “well, that will make the camper a bit lighter, don’t know how much THAT will help, but let’s give it a shot.”

This time, I crouched lower and dug my bare feet into the sand.  I made sure that I would be pushing on the bumper rather than the spongy grill.  When the camper engine revved this time, I pushed with my legs as hard as I could.  Nothing was happening.  I kept pushing harder, harder than I thought I could and screamed in my head and possibly even with my voice “GOD HELP!!!!”  And the bumper moved!  The camper was moving backwards!  Oh my God!

We kept pushing and screaming at the man to not stop, and finally the camper was easily moving on the firm sand.  I heard a bunch of screaming and shouts of joy.  At that moment, I stopped pushing, raised my arms in the air, pumped fists, looked to the sky and said, “THANK YOU GOD FOR HELPING US!!”  I danced back toward the coat and sandals I had left on the beach, saying, “GOD IS GOOD!  GOD IS SO GOOD!  GOD YOU ARE AMAZING!  THANK YOU GOD!  THAT WAS AMAZING!”  I heard shouting and screaming behind me.  And then I stopped and when I turned around, I saw the man running toward me with so much joy in his face.  We gave each other big hugs and I remember saying, “I prayed!  I prayed so hard that God would help us move your camper!  God is SO GOOD!”  He looked overjoyed and thanked me so much.   And I told him that I hoped that he and his family would have a wonderful vacation.

As they drove back out of the restricted beach zone toward the zone where they could drive along the beach, the police officer followed along behind, and I hoped that he followed them not give them a ticket, but hopefully so that they would get to a place where they could safely park and enjoy the beach before continuing on their tour of our country.

Later that day I searched the Bible app on my phone to look for phrases in the Bible which had to do with “faith as small as mustard seeds.”  And when I found this text, I broke into tears:

Matthew 17:19-20:
¹⁹ Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and said, “Why couldn’t we throw the demon out?”  ²⁰ “Because you have little faith,” he said. “I assure you that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Go from here to there,’ and it will go. There will be nothing that you can’t do.” (CEB)

I know that even the biggest of campers is no where near as heavy as a mountain, and it certainly felt like a mountain when we were all pushing on it.  But I can’t say that I had doubts.  All I knew with absolute certainty was that I was there to help, and that I was supposed to be there, in that moment, at that location for whatever reason God had intended.