For Wilshire Baptist Church
“You’ve come out here at the hottest time of the day?” The man added a chuckle and a smirk to his question, which I took to mean “silly tourists.” We didn’t answer him as we walked past him and up the sandy hill, because we knew what we were doing. We were going to church for the second time that day.
We were in Port Aransas for a couple of days to do what we like to do there: watch the sunrise over the gulf, walk the beach, eat some great seafood and generally relax and recharge. We also were there to see what shape the town was in. We hadn’t been to Port Aransas since before Hurricane Harvey devastated the island in 2017. What we found was a community bustling with tourists and showing off a wide array of new vacation homes, tourist-attracting businesses and older structures that clearly had been repaired and updated.
We also were there to check out some things we’d never seen before. That included the Chapel on the Dunes, a little white stucco chapel built in the 1930s that sits on a hill in the middle of an older residential area a short walk from the beach. With six small pews that might sit 18 people, the chapel is known for Biblical scenes painted inside on the altar, walls and ceiling.
After we walked past the curmudgeon who was raking his lawn – at the hottest time of the day, as he said – we climbed the narrow-stepped walkway to the chapel. We were disappointed to find the heavy wooden door locked, so we walked around the outside and looked through the windows as “silly tourists” do before walking back down to the car. We learned later the chapel is open on a limited schedule and sometimes on request, so next time we’re in town we’ll contact whoever to make that request.
Meanwhile, no calls or requests were needed at 6:30 that morning, the coolest time of the day, when we walked to the beach to watch the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike at the chapel, we were not disappointed at all. The sky was painted in vivid pink, orange, yellow and blue with heavy clouds of gray and deep purple hanging low over the breakers. As we sat on beach towels and watched the scene change minute by minute with the rising of the sun, the low clouds released a cooling shower that slowly soaked us and made us laugh. In another time and place, we’d have run for shelter, but when you’ve driven 400 miles to be on the water, you don’t mind a baptism from the sky.
After the rain had moved inland and the sun finally broke free, adding golden brush strokes to the sand and sea, we looked behind us to the west to see a magnificent rainbow rising from the surf and descending onto the dunes behind us. And then when the show in the sky had ended and the sun began to dry us out, we walked down the beach a couple of miles, enjoying the cool water around our ankles and the wet slushy sand under our feet.
So yes, Sir, we waited until the hottest time of the day to see the Chapel on the Dunes. If we’d come earlier, we would have missed what God had to show us in his Cathedral of Creation.