Devotion #2: Castles of Sand
My 8-year-old self was an expert in making sandcastles. Whenever we would go visit my grandma at the beach, I would make sure I had my brightly-colored bucket and shovel. I would pack my plastic bucket with sand, packing it down as firmly as I could, over and over again until my castle was complete. I would take great care in constructing a moat around my fortress and finish my masterpiece by adding adornments of shells, sticks, and seaweed. However, no matter how securely I built the walls and towers of my castle, it would all be washed away as soon as the tide came in. Did you know that there are professional sandcastle builders? I must have missed my calling! Now, my castles were not a picture of structural integrity or grand architecture, but these professional “sandcastles” look like marble statues. They are works of art! No matter how talented the professional or marvelous the structure is, the truth remains that they are still made of sand. The same tide that washed away my meager attempt at a castle will wash out the grandest sand structure.
That is the picture I have in my mind when I read Matthew 7:24-27, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
If I would never build my physical house without a secure foundation, how much more should I take care of what my eternal, spiritual house is built upon? We sing about it with poetic words, “Christ is our firm foundation,” and “On Christ, the solid rock I stand,” but do we ever stop to consider what that actually looks like?
Later on in the book of Matthew, Jesus tells His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25). If Christ is the Rock, then I am the sand. Building my life on Him means letting go of my plans, my desires, my dreams, and myself to pursue Him and His plans, desires, and dreams for my life. Galatians 2:20 puts it this way, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
I can think I have it all together, with all of my plans solidly in place, all the while continuing to build up my life in this world. However, the storms will come. The tide will come in, and the things of this world will all be washed away. I have to make sure that I place all of who I am on the true and secure foundation of Jesus Christ. If my foundation is anything but Him, I might as well be building a sandcastle.