The long, endless beach stretches before her. Misty gray bleeds into salty blue. Her cold toes dig into the saline grains—leave footprints etched across endless flat. There’s a story trailing behind her, yet she keeps her eyes on the misty horizon, continually pressing toward this illusion of grandeur. Her strides break with the intensity of trying to reach this optical illusion. Everything around her blurs and nothing else seems to matter anymore. She has but one desire: to grasp this fantasy beyond the deepening horizon. But at last she tires. 

Slowly, she turns around. Behind her, a trail of hurried footprints imprint a story on her mind — her own story of failure to attain this elusive dream. But presently, she sees beside hers another pair of footprints pressed into the hard sand. She looks closer and sees there are bloody stains soaked into these salty grains. Puzzled, she looks around her for the first time since starting her journey. But the misty ocean fog has blown in, blinding her vision with a blanket of white. Hard questions spill from her lips; she’s becoming frustrated and confused. She struggles and wrestles and demands to know why. Then quietly, presently, in the silence of her defeat, she hears His still, small voice through the wall of white. 

“Child, those are the footprints of My daughter. Those are the footprints of the girl next door. She walked the path beside you, her heart shattered and bruised. Her soul was bleeding, yet she kept pressing on, leaving bloody footprints etched across white sand. From outward appearance, nothing seemed wrong, but it was underneath that pain stained her soul. She walked the path beside you, and it was My prayer that you would stand still for just a moment and listen to My heart beating love to the broken. It was My prayer that you would be My heartbeat of love to the broken. But you pressed on, preoccupied with the fantasy of your misty horizon. Child, this is My heart pressed into sand—these are the footprints of My aching daughter—the girl next door.”

Each one of us are on our own journey. There are those who walk ahead of you, and there are those who walk behind you whose footsteps follow your story. Ironically, these footprints are often easier to see than the footprints that are pressed into the sand next to ours.

And I wonder: how often on our journey are we too preoccupied with the fantasy of our misty horizon, that we fail to see those broken souls walking the path next to ours? I wonder how often we trudge through the ocean mist and forget to stop for the hurting, forget to take a moment for the girl next door, the guy next door. 

We readily reach for the horizon — reach out to grasp thin air — but maybe God is calling us to reach out beside us. Maybe it’s those around us whom we assume know God’s love, but really have never seen His heart and are crying for someone to show them His love.

Because sometimes it’s easier to love at a distance than to take a moment to love the ones beside us, to love the ones we live with and the ones we clash with. Maybe love is also about reaching out to the ones we sit next to and work next to and live next to, the ones we simply don’t understand, the ones we might find irritating. Because maybe love is not just about something big like reaching those way out on our horizon. Maybe love is about something small, like reaching those right beside us. 

Maybe it’s about standing still in the silence and hearing God’s heart beating love to the broken, the hurting, the social outcasts, the ones we find annoying or hard to work with. 

And maybe it’s about being the heartbeat of God to these people—especially there in the difficult. In the ugly. When you can’t understand them. When they make you upset, when it hurts you. 

Maybe this is what love is all about. Loving in the hard and the broken and the chaos. Loving when it hurts and when you simply don’t feel like it. 

My mind wanders to another story…another story with striking similarities…

Dust swirls around his ankles, his eager journey is imprinted in red dirt. Hurried footprints fade behind him— anticipation to satisfy the doubt in his hesitant heart. At last heʼs sees the Man he’s been looking for. In exhaustion he falls to his knees and, looking up into the face of this Man, bold questions spill from his lips. He’s been searching for something that can satisfy. His whole life has been lived grasping for the temporal—this illusion of grandeur beyond the dusty horizon. But now, he asks about the eternal. “What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” This holy Manʼs answer is immersed in simplicity.  “You know the commandments.” The young man lifts his eyes to meet His gaze. “All these things I have kept since my youth.” Breathing a sigh of pity and compassion, He replies to the young man’s anxious statement. “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”

All his life, this rich young ruler was on a race to gain. He ran from one thing to the next, grasping for anything that could fill the empty void in his life. But it could never be reached. It was always just ahead, just beyond his fingertips. 

In deep sorrow he turns away — puts his back to eternal treasure — and resumes his empty, worthless journey to find satisfaction in the temporal. The rich young ruler did nothing wrong, but he missed the one thing that was right— stepping out of his comfort zone when God called him. He was too preoccupied with the fantasy of his dusty horizon to realize the eternal treasure of giving hope to the broken walking beside him. He clung to the temporal, saying no to the eternal. 

Time is precious. So what will you do with your time? Will you rush into each minute grasping for something temporal, unconscious of those running the race beside you? Or will you walk into each moment giving the hope of something eternal to the precious souls around you? 

Dare to impact someone elseʼs story. Dare to love in the hard and in the broken moments when no one wants to touch the sore and ugly. Dare to step outside of your comfort zone. Dare to be the heartbeat of God.