Sand Between Your Toes
The first time I saw the ocean, I was fifteen years old. Our family took a deep-sea fishing trip down to the Gulf of Mexico and after an eleven-hour drive, we walked to the closest pier in Port Aransas as it was getting dark outside. I remember running toward the vast, dark expanse of water that took my breath away and feeling, for the first time, the warm sand under my feet. Oklahoma red dirt sure is warm too, but the feeling of that soft, forgiving, oh-so-sinkable sand was an entirely different experience.
The Science of Tiny
Do you know how sand is formed? Rocks in riverbeds and streams travel thousands of miles toward tributaries that feed into oceans (nothing makes me think of fifth-grade geography more than the word “tributary”) breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces along the way.
The ocean’s waves slowly and gently wash these particles, now tiny, onto the shorelines and we get to enjoy building castles, digging for crabs, and burying our siblings in the pile of microscopic rocks we call sand.
God and Sand
The Bible speaks of sand many times. As God talks with Abraham about His covenant, He likens his future generations to the grains of sand on a seashore--innumerable. In the New Testament, Jesus tells a parable about the dangers of sand. This is what I want to focus on today.
In Matthew 7, Jesus emphasized the importance of building on a solid foundation. He contrasted two home builders--one who anchored his house on a rock and one who built his house entirely on sand. When a vicious storm came, only the house secured on its sturdy cornerstone was resilient enough to survive the tempest.
Jesus wasn’t merely giving architectural advice here. He was making it clear that the principles in His words were the cornerstone that wise men would build their life upon. To crush up His word into teeny, tiny pieces that were comfortable, warm, and pretty would be the way of the fool. But in fact, isn’t that what many of us are guilty of doing at times?
We live in a society and culture in America today that runs away from anything solid and immovable. You can say and do anything, EXCEPT draw conjectures about the absolutes of morality. If you say there are sins that are non-negotiable, you’re deemed as unaccepting and harsh, even by people who call themselves Christians. If you were to stand on a street corner and shout through a bullhorn that God allows sinners to endure eternal punishment in the lake of fire unless they begin to live right, you would have entire groups of people waging a verbal attack against you. They have taken the explicit, precious Word of God and eroded it with tolerance, man’s reasoning, popular opinion, and complacency until it is comfortable and easy for everyone involved.
Upon what are we building our homes? Are we watering down what the Word says about living a holy, righteous life so that we can still watch the raunchy shows because they're funny? This is a dangerous game to play that seems positively fine and dandy--until the storm comes. There are some rocks that you just don't mess with when it comes to the Word of God, the Chief Cornerstone: the Oneness of God, the importance of prayer, and baptism in the only saving name of Jesus, to name a few.
Are you teaching your babies by example that the church is the safest place they'll ever be or are you teaching them that it’s okay to merely go to church on Sundays and then live however they want during the week?
Building your home on this constantly shifting sand that is so easily manipulated by the enemy’s agenda places you and your babies in danger of crumbling at the next wave of every life storm. For the sake of your own salvation and for your children’s salvation, build your home on the Rock--not the particles of the rock that are more convenient than others.
24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
-Matt. 7:24-25
