Simple Sand

The ocean, a beach…and sand. Sand has some wonderful qualities, and some not so wonderful qualities if you have small children! I remember vacations where I thought we had gotten all the sand washed off before we entered the vacation dwelling, only to find it all over the floor as we walked…..over and over.

But the good qualities out weigh the bad (as long as there are not cats around). As a family on vacation, one of our favorite activities was building sandcastles and the artistic ones of the family loved sculpting different marine animals. I was constantly amazed by what one could do with sand!

One year we all worked hard to make a fort full of castles. Not just one castle with several individual sections (aka buckets), but a fort with a number of castles, a moat, and even a draw bridge over that moat! It took all day actually, and we all put our hearts in to it!

People walked by and admired it. Some stopped to chat, others took pictures. This was a FORT. Lots of work. Lots of fun.

Looking at our finished work with pride, we decided a dinner meal might be necessary. No one really wanted to leave. We all wanted to protect it. But the reality of its disappearance was in the future, and while unspoken at this point…we all dreaded it.

As soon as we came back from dinner, we all wanted to take a late walk on the beach to see if the fort had survived. It had…it was intact! There was hope!

We watched the sun set and knew we had to leave. “Maybe it will be here in the morning” one child said. “Yeah, I know it will…we worked so hard!” Ah gees, we had to tell them that it would most likely be gone in the morning. We felt like we were awful parents at that declaration!

But the fact was simple. The foundation was not firm. It was not secure. It was fragile. It would not stand. Sand shifts.

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:26-27

The next morning we did not hurry to go down to our spot. We knew what we would find. Or not find. The fort was gone. The fort was not only built on the sand, it was built out of sand!

“We should have built the fort out of something else on the concrete sidewalk.” “Yeah, it would still be there this morning if we did!”
Two weeks later there was a fort, built out of popsicle sticks and rocks…on the concrete patio at our house. We finally had to convince them to take it down…because it wasn’t coming down any other way!
Be blessed~
IN CHRIST ALONE

Isaiah 55:8-9

*google search image, NIV Bible*