Sand

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I was reading my good friend’s Steve B. blog this morning.  He was my boss (senior pastor) at a church I previously served.  We became close.  He wrote and sang a song at my wedding.  He just might be the best guitarist I have ever been around.  He also might be the most authentic person I have ever known.  He is honest about his feelings, about his disappointments, about his hopes, and about his dreams.  I love that about Steve.

He is getting ready to leave Ghana, where he and his family have spent the last two years.  His wife’s Fulbright and work with One-Laptop-Per-Child brought them to Ghana (you can read Suzanne’s prospectus here).  Steve now serves as a missionary there.  Soon, though, they will return from Ghana back to Central Texas, where Suzzane will continue her calling as a professor, and Steve his vocation as a pastor.  I almost wrote “they will be returning back to a normal life,” but I know full well that they aren’t coming back the same people that they left.  And that’s exactly the point.

I agree with Steve that much of our life is like sand.  We make impressions in the sand when we walk, or we build sand castles, only to have them washed away.  It’s as if they never existed.  Much has been written about sand castles and their propensity to be
washed away.  It is usually a metaphor to say that the things that we
have built up are so easily destroyed or forgotten.  As Jimi Hendrix put it,

and so castles made of Sand
Fall in the Sea Eventually

I wonder if we look at sand castles the wrong way.  I wonder if what’s important isn’t that the castle isn’t standing now, but that at one time, it stood.  I wonder if instead of focusing our lives on what was, or how fragile it is, or how easily things get swept away, that we can honor the things that were and hope someday that someone else will build a better and more beautiful castle than we could.  Their castle too will be swept away.  But maybe it will inspire someone else to improve upon it.  Maybe someone else can dig a little deeper impression.  Maybe, just maybe, God is in the midst of doing something better and bigger than we can dream of, and although we may not see what it is, we can believe.

So here’s to offering as much faith hope and love as we can where we are here and now.  And here’s to letting God do the rest.

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