The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
- Genesis 22:15-28
But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’”
- Genesis 32:12
He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.
- Job 9:9
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
- Psalm 139:17-18
“Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.
- Hosea 1:10-11
He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land— the Lord is his name.
- Amos 5:8
Boilerplate
I’m Harold Dykstra. I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story. My time is well spent. A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel. I did not know she was an angel at the time. The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone. And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy. She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others. She changed my life. Since she was a doll that had come to life, we came up with the term ‘other living.’ She was not a human, an animal, or even a plant, but she was definitely living, and very vibrant. Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs. After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.
This Week’s Question
In the last episode, Babs wanted to stay in bed. I really think she wanted to ensure that I would drive where there were many restrooms along the way. I made another successful sales call that afternoon, and then, instead of staying at my usual hotel, I went to the beach. For our day off from travelling, we had a wonderful seafood dinner in an old rickety shack on the back bay. We would awake early and walk the beach and look for seashells, but she wanted to put her toes in the Atlantic Ocean and the Specific Ocean in the same year. (Sorry, that was the word Babs used for the Pacific Ocean.) We had been to Cape Cod back before Christmas, but that was last year and with the waves breaking and ice flying into the air off the breakers, we were not in the mood to get in the water. But now with warmer water, she could not wait.
The water was still cold, but it felt good. At least when the water was barely ankle deep.
Babs giggled, “Harold! I can just stand in the wet sand and as the waves come in, I can feel myself moving. This is wild!”
I laughed, “That is one of my first memories of the beach when I was little, but then again, you have never experienced it.”
When the wave went back out, she noticed a sand dollar in the moonlight. She tossed it back into the ocean.
I smiled, “There is an old pastor’s story about throwing sand dollars into the ocean. There are so many, and the waves bring even more on shore, that one man told his friend who was throwing the sand dollars into the ocean that it didn’t matter, but the friend said, ‘It matters to this one’ and he hurled it into the ocean.”
Babs picked up another sand dollar. She whispered something to it that was totally incoherent before she tossed it into the ocean.
I asked, “And what was that conversation all about?”
Babs smiled, “I told the sand dollar to be sure and stay in the ocean this time. He said he’d try.”
I asked another question. “And how do you know that is what he said?”
Babs huffed, “Well, do you speak sand dollar, Mr. Smarty Pants?”
I shook my head. I could never win an argument with my wife, but with Babs, I had to navigate this whole ‘other living’ thing. If she says she could speak sand dollar, who was I to question it?
Babs asked if we could just sit and listen to the waves. I had grabbed a couple of towels from the rack next to the swimming pool just in case. We walked to a spot near the dunes, and I laid out the towels.
As Babs looked up at the starry night, she asked, “Harold, how many stars are there?”
I thought I knew where this was going. “According to scientists that know more than I do, but they are probably wrong, there are 200 sextillion stars in the universe. A nice round guestimate.”
Babs groaned, “All you science types think about sex all the time, Harold! What is that in human numbers?”
I then groaned, “Not ‘sex’. Sextillion. One sextillion is ten to the 21st power. In other words, two hundred sextillion is 200 with twenty-one zeroes behind it. And before you ask, other scientists think there is 7.5 sextillion grains of sand on earth. But it depends on which scientists you talk to. Some estimate a lot more stars so that there are something like 2,000 stars for each grain of sand. Again, both numbers are mere estimates. The universe is infinite and every time a scientist says a spot is empty, we find tons of stars there. And with the oceans moving sand from one place to another, we can only estimate how many grains of sand there are.”
Babs scrunched her nose, “So, how does God know if He has fulfilled His promise to Abraham?”
I looked at the horizon and laughed. “Babs, we puny humans have no idea how many stars there are. We puny humans have no idea how many grains of sand there are, but God knows both of those numbers. The people who have wrong ideas of how humanity started think there have been about 117 billion humans born on earth. That is a wild estimate that starts with evolution instead of Creation. So, what do they know?!”
Babs giggled, “So, we have to go a few more thousands of years to even get close?”
Then I added, “But maybe the angel meant ‘How many stars can you count?”
Babs smiled and stared at the sky. Since we had walked some distance from the hotel and most of the beach homes were unoccupied this time of year, there was very little light pollution. Babs started turning her head from one point to another.
Then she said, “Harold, hold me! I’m getting dizzy!”
She leaned over and fell against my chest. I started to laugh and then I felt her laughing quietly.
I asked, “You didn’t get very far with your counting, did you?”
She giggled, “Nope! I got dizzy instead.”
I nodded, “So, when Jacob repeats the promise God made, he paraphrases it to mean ‘more than we can count.’ If you could keep from getting dizzy, you might find 2600 to 4600 stars with your naked eye.”
Babs said, “Harold, you said naked!”
I chided, “No offense, Babs. I was referring to not having a telescope and the limitations of the eye to see a star in a narrow band of light intensity. And the range is very wide depending on where on earth you look and what time of the year it is. My favorite constellation is Orion, and where we live in Tracy, it is not visible all year round.”
With her head on my chest, Babs growled, “Harold, are you becoming a star worshipper, believing in all this astrology nonsense?!”
I laughed, “No, Babs, you know that Orion is mentioned three times in the Bible. God made Pleiades and Orion. Why would I worship something God made when I have God in my heart? I was just saying that Orion is not always visible. So, the number of stars that we can count, if we do not get dizzy first, can vary up to 2000 stars. So, God being figurative with Abraham in saying more than you can count, we do not have to reach anything in the sextillions.”
Babs then shocked me with her wit, “Not without a whole lot of sex!”
I sputtered a laugh. When I recovered from the shock, I asked, “But before we dismiss the promise God made to Abraham, what does He end that promise with?”
Babs said, “God said that the offspring of Abraham would bless the world because Abraham had obeyed. I’m thinking that the blessing to the world is Jesus, but Abraham’s obedience is a reminder that all of us should obey. Right?”
I snickered, “I could not have said it better.”
Babs then got up and grabbed her towel. “I think I am over being dizzy. When we get back to the hotel, I get to shower first! The salt water is doing something to my ankles now that I am drying out.”
I said, “But I have salt caking up on my ankles too, Babs!”
Babs retorted, “I signed on to be your travel buddy. Nothing more! And if I tempted you into changing our travel arrangements, that would mean that I would not be obedient to God. So, no arguments! I go first.” I saw the mirth in Babs’ eyes or was it the moonlight.
Yep, I never won an argument with my wife, and it looked like I would never win an argument with Babs either.
Credits
All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife. We would talk about anything and everything. And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.
My wife wanted to see Cape Cod when we lived in Watertown, Massachusetts. We lived in the greater Boston area in the winter. We parked the car near Chatham, MA (I think), and I took a few photos of the ocean. The waves were very choppy and as the breakers formed, the wind would lift a spray from the top of the wave. You could see it freeze before it fell back into the water. Yes, very strong winds that day and very cold.
After researching the numbers on stars and sand, I found other research that was comparisons between the stars and sand, none adding up to the other numbers, and I did not wish to start talking about septillions of stars. All of this is guesswork anyway. And while the grains of sand is fairly fixed, God keeps making stars and galaxies. And the estimate of the people of earth was based on mankind “evolving” into something like a human 8000 years ago, compared to Adam and Eve being created by God about 6500 years ago. So, those numbers are off too. Did God mean over 200 sextillion descendants of Abraham or simply a number that Abraham could not comprehend? Regardless of how many dollars the US Congress spends, I cannot wrap my head around billions since I have never had more than five digits in all my accounts combined. But congress spends trillions of dollars that we do not have.
And there are a little less than 8 billion people on the earth at last count – again, an estimate! The actual number of people has changed since I first started writing this paragraph!
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
👌👌
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