WESTERN WISDOM "It Takes Lots of Sand" audio podcast by award-winning western author Stephen Bly. Sponsored by BlyBooks.com Legacy Series.
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It Takes A Lot of Sand
Stephen Bly
Circa 1996
I was hanging out in the back of the grain growers supply, watching as they put some studded snow tires on the back of my old rig. Suddenly, the siren went off. Willy dumped the tire tools and ran for his pickup. He’s an emergency medical technician and that means responding to the fire alarm, as well as any other calls.
Well, it turned out to be nothing more than a drunk passed out at a local saloon. But that’s not always the case. Last winter, when the wind whipped the snow to near white-out conditions, a call came in from the railroad. Their emergency crew was over a hundred miles away and there was an accident on one of the canyon trestles.
Willy went out on the call at 10:00 p.m. He hung from a rope above the highway in a blizzard and gurneyed up an injured man.
Willy Had Sand
In the Old West you’d say a man like Willy had a lot of sand. That’s an old cowboy term meaning he had courage. I remember my granddaddy characterizing a friend by saying that the man “had enough sand for a beach front.”
There just wasn’t a much higher compliment.
What Having Sand Means
It didn’t mean reckless or foolish. It meant brave and fearless. On the frontier, you couldn’t have too much of either quality.
Maybe the same is true on the spiritual frontiers today. Check out what the Bible says.
“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).
Sand Equals Courage
It takes a lot of courage to do any of these things.~~ Go to a school board meeting and protest the graphic sexual content of your child’s homework assignment.
~ Jeopardize your job by refusing to comply with the boss’s instruction about covering up construction defects.
~~ Say no to the young blonde receptionist with a cute smile and curvy figure when you’re married to another woman.
~ March against abortions when the whole community categorizes you as part of the unstable, lunatic fringe.
~~ Profess your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior at your class reunion when the room is full of hostile atheists.
We Need Sand
What we really need is spiritual sand, to be people who won’t back down when there’s an opportunity to make a clearly Christian stand.