ANOTHER POST FROM MY 2005 DEVOTIONAL MANUSCRIPT
"Anyone who ignores my teaching is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand."
"Anyone who ignores my teaching is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand."
Matthew 7:26
As a youngster I had a mortal dread of quicksand, complete with nightmares. Not that I had ever seen real quicksand, mind you. The problem was that all my favorite TV shows like Roy Rogers and Bonanza and Gunsmoke and The Rifleman and Rawhide had an episode where somebody got stuck in the miry stuff. Often the person would be rescued, but I had seen more than a few characters breath their last struggling to escape a pit they never saw coming. So the power of what I saw on TV overwhelmed the truth that quicksand was never a risk in my life.
Eventually I grew up and got married...to a girl who loves the beach. Any beach. Whether blustery Qualicum on Vancouver Island, lush Kiawah Island off Charleston, South Carolina, or the shell-laden Sanibel in Florida. Her recent favorite is the sugar-white strand that is Gulf Shores, Alabama. Her dream would be to live on the beach...enjoying the crisp sea breezes, the cry of the gulls, the rustling dune grasses, the lingering sunsets, the sand between her toes and, endlessly, the waves breaking upon the shore. When we're at the beach, time stands still...and drinking in the wonder of a vast horizon's span makes life's petty troubles seem so far away. But the power of what we see at the ocean's edge overwhelms what we know to be true: storms and currents and hurricanes are constantly eroding and changing our beaches. And our sand castles never survive even a single night.
Jesus knew that the world would trick us like that—whether in terror with exaggerated fright, or in seduction with visions of paradise. That's why St. Paul reminded the Corinthians (who, incidentally, had a terrific view of the Mediterranean) to live by faith, and not by sight. We all live our lives on the shifting sands of this world. But at the end, if we have built only upon what we can see and touch, all we'll have to show for it is dust and ashes.
Jesus' story about the foolish man building on sand and the wise man building on rock is the closing argument to his Sermon on the Mount. He is making the case for all he had just imparted— the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, laying up treasure in heaven, seeking first the kingdom—as the only secure foundation for an eternal life. In all my many years on this earth, I have yet to see quicksand in its natural state, but having finally figured out the one place to stand firm, I'm not worried about it anymore.
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