Volume 32

While growing up near Washington, D.C., Randy’s family took vacations in Ocean City, Maryland where he and eight siblings played on the beach. He went on to study art design in New York City but gave up a promising career to pursue oil painting back in Ocean City. In 1974 he met Marc Altamar, an artist creating Christian images in the sand, right next to the boardwalk. Before long, Randy was helping his mentor daily. He took over the work when Altamar grew ill and died.

Now, almost every day between spring and fall, the artist and ordained minister sculpts huge piles of sand into scenes depicting God’s love and power, everything from Moses and the Ten Commandments to Jesus on the cross. Each of the massive sculptures takes between six and 17 hours to complete and the finished scenes make the Bible come alive. But it’s hard work.

For starters, Randy has to create massive piles by pushing aside the dry sand and digging up the moist material from the bottom. “You have to start really deep,” he says. Once the mound is packed down, he works with a simple plastic knife to add depth and stunning detail.

In the beginning, the tide would wash away his work each day, or the sun would dry out the sand until the sculpture collapsed. But now he sprays the finished work with a mixture of water and Elmer's glue. “If I give it a good consistent spray, it may stay for a couple of weeks,”hesays, “if it doesn't rain too hard and nobody jumps on it.”

Believing the sun and waves often make people think about life’s bigger issues, Randy caters to the 10,000 vacationers who pass his work every night. He leaves Bible pamphlets in a plastic jug and often talks to people who stop by. Describing his work as a visual communication of God’s love, the artist remains humble.

“Anything you like to do, you can use it somehow for he Lord,” Randy says. “God has invested something in everybody. It's our job to look for it, practice it, bring it out and give it back to Him.

“Finding yourself drawn closer to the Lord is refreshing... It renews you. Eternity is forever and this life doesn't last long. People need to put it in perspective.”

Perspective is what the resurrection is all about. Bolstered and emboldened by solid evidence that Jesus came back to life, we have every reason to believe we, too, will rise from the dead and live an eternity in the presence of God. When measured against that grand scale, much of life’s failure and frustration becomes easier to take. It replaces a sense of helplessness with hope and wholeness. But as Randy Hofman’s work reminds us, the resurrection is also about the daily renewal of our identity, purpose and destination.

God has given you a passion and capacity you can use to honour him, proclaim who you are, and bless others. Your job is to find that gift, then own it and hone it into a ministry that communicates the love of Jesus. Sometimes He puts a mentor in your midst, to point you in the right direction but the hard work will ultimately fall to you.

To use your giftedness, you must dig deep, getting beyond the dry surface of the heart to the Spirit-watered spaces where you’ll find the things that truly hold together as you give shape to your spirituality. Use the tools at hand to make the Word come alive with depth and definition. But at the centre of it all, let the message be one of hope and resurrection, held in place with a consistent coating of God’s love.

Even then, recognise that we must constantly retell the Easter story with our God-given giftedness in a world where our message is continually washed away by the tides of moral compromise or toppled by the heat of hypocrisy. If we do so, we’ll be renewed. And if we prompt people to pause long enough to consider life’s bigger issues, we’ll point them to a stability that will never give out or give way.

By Rick Gamble. Published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications. To subscribe to this free weekly article,