Sand Castle: 1. a small castle-like structure made of wet sand, as by children at a beach. 2. A plan or idea with little substance.
The dictionary definition is accurate enough, but in yet another sense much of our lives involves building sand castles.
It’s not that we are consciously and deliberately choosing to construct something fragile and impermanent. It’s that no matter how hard we may try to build to last, no construct of ours lasts forever, not even close!
– Many marriage rituals include the making of a commitment “until death do us part”. It may be a sincere and heartfelt expression of choice and determination—but, alas, how often unanticipated circumstances and changes, like the sea with the sand castle, can wash it away.
– For some people their employment is something to be endured for the sake of the salary they receive, but no matter what their feelings any employment is impermanent, although why and when we may not know.
– Think of the sacrifices parents often make to provide for their families. They may work and save to buy a big home, enough for all their children. But sometimes as children grow, marry, and move away and as parents age, the house that was so desired once may become empty and burdensome.
– You may have a job that you dedicate much of your life to. You may even make valuable contributions to the organization’s greater good. Yet, when another comes to take your place, all may change for better or for worse.
There’s an old lyric that voices a similar idea: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”
It’s clearly expressed in the Bible: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:14)
The moral of all this doesn’t mean that every human effort is futile. There is a joy in the doing, a satisfaction in the achievement, a gifting to another or others in the process.
In the Genesis story of the temptation and the fall, the serpent urges the woman to eat the forbidden fruit, “…your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods…”
Isn’t any human aspiration to build forever, any attempt to create something that is everlasting succumbing to the same temptation?
Isn’t any brooding sorrow over the collapsing, failing, or ending of any kind of human endeavor or effort “devilish”? Or, as Mr. Spock, of Star Trek fame, might say, “illogical”?
We may yearn for the eternal but it is beyond our means to achieve it. We may lament the endless moments of loss in our lives but it is our human condition.
Just because a sand castle, no matter how large or beautiful or complex it may be, ultimately is washed away doesn’t mean that there was no pleasure or satisfaction in its building.
The very capability to build it and all our life and to experience pleasure, satisfaction, and joy in the doing is a gift of God.
Shouldn’t that very realization be a further motive for gladness and for thanksgiving?
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Enjoy your time at the beach! Have fun building your sand castles! But, when the day wanes and the daylight dims, it’s time to go home.
15 August 2021