Sandbars

Looking North at southernmost point of Barefoot Beach State Preserve

While growing up in south Florida, besides being a river rat, swimming in the Gulf of Mexico was a give me. I remember finding sand dollars during low tide on a sandbar in shallow waters many times. Sandbars or shoals develop through a process referred to as shoaling; this is where the water becomes shallow due to sand being deposited, creating a navigational hazard particularly in an inlet or pass used to access the Gulf. Shoaling will never stop and left unaddressed will probably close the pass to boaters, except for kayaks and canoes. This is what is happening presently at Wiggins Pass located on the north end of Delnor-Wiggins State Park in Naples, Florida. 

Click to Enlarge (Google Earth 2010. Imagery Date: 4.2.10) Wiggins Pass, Naples, FL.

Looking at Barefoot across the Pass

On Christmas Eve of last year Beverly and I took a stroll along the beach there. I have always enjoyed visiting some of my old stomping grounds as a boy in Bonita Springs and Naples. I was surprised to see how narrow and shallow the channel was, snaking through Wiggins Pass. Obviously, the inlet was slowly filling in with sand deposited by the Gulf currents. While the shoaling eats away at the access to the Gulf, some boats are sandpapering their hull or running aground, particularly at low tide. 

During the new and full moons when the sun, moon, and earth are in alignment, the tides are strongly affected by the moon’s gravitation pull, with some help from the sun, reducing the depth to around two feet in some places in the pass; so I’m told. So the plan is to dredge an average depth of 8’ in the channel and 12’ at the entrance of the inlet. But as with any project like this, naturally, there are political, environmental, and financial entanglements, and the sand scooper awaits the order.

As the sand continues to accumulate unabated, safe passage through the pass remains uncertain. My understanding is that real estate sales and slip sales at the local Marina wane, and boaters plan their trips around the tides with no guarantee that they won’t run aground if their timing and sight are off. I know influential visionaries will not allow the pass to be renamed Wiggins Impasse.

Ironically, there is the capital to get the dredging done, but there are so many concerns about how and when to accomplish this objective that the powers that be are creating a shoaling of their own. Everyone carries their own material into the pass project, and the momentum is in jeopardy of running aground on the sandbar of their own making, creating unnecessary delays; meanwhile, the sand is rolling in with the tide. 

But something like this can happen in anything where parties agree on the objective but disagree on how to accomplish it for whatever reason, valid or not; and the problem is not going away, and all the pressure points are feeling it. Enter the popular story of David and Goliath in the valley of Elah (1 Sam 17:19). 

For forty days (1 Sam 17:16), Goliath appeared and taunted the Israeli army of King Saul, morning and evening, desiring a “sensible” alternative to the needless bloodshed. Yeah, it’s sensible to a man of his stature. Read his proposal on how to clear this mess up with no turbidity, no harm to any animals or the environment, and safety and prosperity for all; it’s a win/win all the way around, except for one maybe…. 

1Sam 17:8  Then he stood and cried out to the armies of Israel, and said to them, "Why have you come out to line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and you the servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me.

1Sam 17:9  If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us."

1Sam 17:10  And the Philistine said, "I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together."

 

King Saul was so impressed with the wisdom of the offer that he yelled to the rank and file, “Any nine foot men out there?” The silence yelled back, “No!”This was a great deal for the Philistines but not for the Israelis. The king and his commander and subordinates agreed on the objective, but no one wanted to take on a man who was over nine feet tall and weighed 600 to 700+ pounds. Saul was head and shoulders over all his army, but even he probably fell short by 3 feet and some odd inches, and gave way to 400 to 500+ pounds. Every man including the king was personally intimated by the size and strength of Goliath. 

They couldn’t even get together and figure out that Goliath could not dodge hundreds of arrows and spears if they worked together as a team when he came out to defy the camp of Israel. The only thing Saul, the commander and chief, could come up with is for anyone who kills Goliath, he will reward the man with great riches, his daughter, and his father’s house being exempted from taxes (1 Sam 17:25).

There was no way Saul was going to keep such an agreement with the Philistines. His throne would be at stake. So he had nothing to lose when David showed up and volunteered. The absence of any volunteers for forty days indicated Saul’s offer wasn’t accepted. 

The scuttlebutt among the army of God went like this, “What good is all of that if you’re dead?” And so the sediments of slander, sarcasm, and scorn entered the valley with the early and evening tides as Goliath slowly but surely was closing the pass of resolve for Saul's army. Couldn’t God have sent a lightning bolt and zapped the grizzly Goliath? Yes, but God was going to use a small stone to do the job!

So for forty days their brains wandered in the wilderness of bewilderment as they listened to Goliath hurling insults in the morning and the evening at the God of Israel and His army. The Philistines secretly feared the Israeli army, but put up a good front by drawing courage and strength from Goliath’s presence (cf. 1 Sam 17:51b). 

The daily taunting of Goliath was punching a hole right through their courage and purpose as the army of God. Their lack of action also revealed a spiritual deficiency in the Israeli leadership and in every soldier under that command, including David’s three oldest brothers (1 Sam 17:13) – Goliath was bigger than God! They didn’t say that, but their behavior revealed it. They were shoaling.

Enter one David, the dredger, a real spirited confront-the-problem-head-on kind of guy who loved the LORD. In his mind, killing a lion plus a bear equals I can take Goliath (1 Sam 17:36, 37) in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel (1 Sam 17:45). I will clear a way for God’s troops to access the open waters of God’s will by removing this shoal of Satan and the mental impediments hindering God’s army. What was David’s motive? So that all the earth may know there is a God in Israel (1 Sam 17:46). Next came the big THUMP!

1Sam 17:49  Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth.

1Sam 17:50  So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in the hand of David.

1Sam 17:51  Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it. And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

There was a great victory that day by the Israeli army over the Philistines with Goliath out of the way (1 Sam 17:52). Thanks to David, they mustered up the courage to pursue the Philistines. Now don’t get me wrong, if I was there, I probably would be huddling among the cowards, too! I never claimed to be a spiritual giant like David. David was a courageous, can-do kind of man for God. 

There is something about giants that cause people of faith like us to withdraw from God’s objectives for our lives. We see this with the people in the wilderness after the scouting report (Num 13:32, 33) and Saul’s army in the valley of Elah. This kind of spiritual shoaling prevents God’s people from accessing the ocean of God’s blessing for their lives! There will always be in the life of a believer some spiritual sandbar forming. Left to the tides of neglect, it’s going to get in the way and cause us problems. 

We know what has to be done; the situation is not going away until it is addressed, and the pressure mounts with each passing day – Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me (1 Sam 17:8) or “Someone please step up to the plate and dredge this pass!” But the response is “It’s not that easy; I wished it was; it’s complicated.” It’s always complicated, and it is never easy. Goliath was a huge complication. He already had clogged the artery to the blessing while the Israelis debated how to remove Goliath. David steps on the stage of history and cuts to the chase. Sometimes the best solution is the simplest.

It took a positive and decisive young man, who had faith in God to get the job done. There was no shoaling in his mind, no personal agenda, and no power plays that lead to further delay. He listened to a higher octave – God. His meteoric rise from shepherd to giant killer in one day would set the pace of his future; who would have ever believed it! God’s solutions usually come from the most unexpected places.

Keeping the channel clear to access the open waters of God’s blessing in our lives is a never-ending process. The tides of this world will never stop bringing in the sand this side of eternity. We just have to keep it dredged out so the channel runs deep between us and God. The truth of the matter is that there are no Goliaths greater than God. My Mom shared a quote we me the other day that said, "The tasks ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us." David knew this. It takes a man or woman after God's own heart to be an effective dredger! Size is not the issue; faith is.

Dredging Wiggins Pass is not a Goliath-kind of obstacle; the giant is getting everybody to agree on taking out Goliath. This is the shoaling I was telling you about. In the spiritual world we are not immune to this very thing. We know what God wants for us to do, but we begin spiritual shoaling whenever we allow a lack of faith through unbelief, fear, intimidation, indecision, distrust, self-will, selfishness, pride, doubt, procrastination, God-is-not-on-the-throne thinking, and so forth, to become deposited in our mind until it turns into a real hindrance, a sandbar.

Instead of going between the channel markers of the straight and narrow toward the the deep things of God, sometimes we snake around our personal sandbars to get out into the open waters.  Maybe we should described this as the Wiggles syndrome. Rather than removing those sandy things that accumulate in our life that are abrasive to our spiritual health, we just navigate around them, like pet sins, in an attempt to enter the open waters of God’s blessing.  Most of the time we miss what God has for us because we run aground on the way out. We are to be grounded but not aground.

Eventually our personal sandbars choke access to God's blessings for our life.  How long God allows us to navigate through life like this is uncertain, but it is not pleasing to Him. Maybe Wiggins Pass should be called Wiggles Pass for now.  <><

To view aerial photos of Wiggins Pass click on link: Naples Daily News.