Sand Castles

 

 

We have all built them. As a child, with a child, or (if we are honest and no one is watching) as an adult. Creating castles and moats is a fun way to study tides, waves, planning, improvising, defending, repairing.

Occasionally indulging in the ephemeral (meaning “lasting for a day”) eases anxieties. We ephe­meral entities intuitively identify with impermanence. Our good God “has given us all things richly to enjoy”— including momentary sunsets, rainbows, bird songs, mountain vistas, and sand castles. These can relieve us from the tedium of taking ourselves too seriously.

While welcoming such forays into the fleeting, we are wise to beware of building on sand that which we wish will endure. Today’s (ephemeral) political and social issues, sung in our ears by media sirens, will sink to silence as new issues intrude. He who marries the Spirit of the Age today will find himself a widower tomorrow. Better to build our lives on the rock—the lasting words of Jesus. He knows and addresses the eternal, not the ephemeral.

A second scenario in which it is taboo to tolerate the temporary is how we build the Lord’s church. An outwardly imposing edifice may merely furnish fuel for the flames: “The [examining] fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If anyone’s work remain, he will receive a reward; if burned up, he will suffer loss.”

Certainly let us enjoy the ephemeral good things God gives us! But let us not invest our entire lives there.