As the early morning fog began to lift today, I walked and talked to my Lord. I prayed for others and sought His wisdom on how best He could work through me this day. I asked Him specifically if He wanted me to write a blog today and what I should write about if that was His plan for me. Just a few seconds later an image appeared in my head of a sandcastle near the shoreline that had already started to erode as the tide drew in.
A common question came to me after the Holy Spirit had given me the image. “What do you see?” God shows us lots of things in our day. For me it is often an image or thought or passage of Scripture that is “dropped” into my mind. For you it could be similar to that or perhaps something you see in the physical world. Regardless of the way God chooses to communicate, the truth is that He speaks a lot to us. Most of the time we are too focused on something else to see it or hear it, but He speaks. In the quiet whispers of our hearts, the question comes…… “my child, what do you see?”
As I walked and pondered this morning, I first thought about where we build our castles on the beach. We either build far from the water and feverishly lug small buckets back and forth or we build at the shoreline so the water is close to our project. Without water, there can be no form or structure made. I began to “see” the first spiritual lesson that my Daddy was showing me.
For Jesus followers, we need His living water to flow through us to bring form, guidance, and malleability. Without His life-sustaining presence, all of our attempts to build a life of grace remain a shifting pile of unrecognizable sand. Once we have a thirst for His water we will either try to draw Him in to the places we have decided to dwell or we will position ourselves much closer to the Source of life. I have tried both ways in life and in sandcastle building.
The first choice is to build in a safe place of our own choosing. We know we want His water but we also know we don’t want to give up any of our present circumstances so we take little buckets with us whenever we go to church or other spiritual places to bring some Jesus back to our lives without ever having to move any closer to the real source.
The second choice is to move toward the Source of Life. Mary chose to sit at Jesus’ feet, right in the tideline of Living Water, while Martha ran all over the place with her little plastic buckets. If we are going to build an epic sandcastle, we need lots and lots of water. If we are going to live our best and epic life, we need lots and lots of Jesus and we must be willing to move and position ourselves to be ever closer to the Source. To move closer and closer to Jesus usually means moving further and further from something else we had in mind. I’m going for epic. I’m going for extraordinary.
As I continued to walk, the next lesson took form in my mind. If we choose to build a sandcastle, (or a life), so close to the water, (to Jesus), there will be a cost. The tide will come in eventually and the castle will begin to erode. I saw an image in my mind similar to the one pictured above in this blog. Once again, Daddy taught His truths to my heart.
We fear loss and we fear change. We don’t want to spend effort and time and talent on something that is only going to get washed away. I think all believers have an innate sense that if we align too closely with Jesus our lives will look different and there will be a cost to living in the tideline. I have seen so many believers over the years (myself included at times) that have been growing in their faith and then stop dead in their tracks and move no further because they felt the world start to fall away and the cost seemed to become too great.
Today’s lesson for me wasn’t about loss though….it was about transformation. God calls us into relationship with Him (it is what we were made for!!) and woos us ever closer to the water’s edge. He fills us and adds form and dimension and then we can begin creating and serving and loving. We become beautiful castles in the sand. If we would not stall out or run away as the Living Water comes close and completely engulfs us, we would find the great truth that He showed me today in a picture in my mind: Of course we are going to change and begin to look and act differently. But not one grain of sand, or moment of our life, is lost once the Waters come rushing in. We are just transformed into a different shape. His eye is on every grain of sand. We are not being lost or discarded but drawn in and used for His glory and purposes.
God has always had a plan for you and me. He never meant for us to build a life for ourselves that just sat there looking pretty but was ignored and left behind at the end of the day. We weren’t meant to dry out and return to a pile of shifting sand. We were created for a life of wave after wave of exquisite love and tenderness to wash over us and transform us into the beautiful intentions of a Holy Father who hasn’t left one iota of our lives to chance. He has planned it all out in intricate detail.
If we would trust and not let fear rule our lives, if we would build our lives close to Jesus, we would be transformed into His likeness. That is when we begin to live an extraordinary life.
Sweep us away Lord Jesus. Like sandcastles in the tide. Straight into Your heart.