harmonious.
The first thing God did in creating the world was to separate the waters from the firmament. God made a beach. So when I stand on the shore, I am at God’s workshop for creation. • The possibilities are great; sand— like life—holds promise. God puts me in this world and gives me some author- ity over it. I can do great things, even take a simple substance like sand and create something. What I do, whether with sand or with my life, is up to me and how I develop my skills and use them. • I dare not pile the sand too high, reaching beyond my rightful powers. Sometimes I try to build a tower, but it collapses. I thought the sand was the proper consistency, the design stable. But it fell. There is risk in building sand castles. If I build safe little mounds there is no risk, but it’s not very interesting or sat- isfying. I must stretch my imagination, expand my skills. I learn quickly that there are things I can’t do. I learn what “works” and what will fail. My efforts are subject to the laws and will of the Creator. I can’t exceed God’s intent. • The tide will return.
Every day someone says to me, “Isn’t the tide going to wash that away?” “Yes.”
“Shouldn’t you dig a moat to keep the tide back?” “It won’t help.” I know the tide will return. I know my creation will not last the night. It exists—in the grand timetable of God—only for a split second. The things we build out- side the beach can last for hundreds of years, but even that time is brief in God’s sight. The cycles of the tide determine what can be done on the beach and for how long.
When I start and where is a critical decision, for the
tide will return. When the tide comes in, what I have built returns to the larger creation whence it came. That’s how life in this world works. Even if we build things on “solid ground,” they will at God’s great and final judg- ment be washed away. One year I visited Sedona, Ariz., and concluded that those huge, wind-carved, dramatic, sandstone shapes
For more information on this topic, go to http:// youcanbuildasandcastle.
wordpress.com.
Austin is a retired ELCA pastor in Teaneck, N.J., and author of You Can Build a Sand Castle: A Simple Guide to Fun at the Beach (
www.amazon. com/You-Can-Build-Sand-Castle/ dp/1466315512/).
July 2013 17
surrounding the city were “God’s sand castles,” created over millions of years with God’s tools—the wind and rain and sun. Even those giant rocks will someday disappear.
The rock, the metaphorical “rock,” the only rock that counts, is not simply solid ground but the sure knowledge of Jesus Christ, revealed to us as savior. If I want permanence, I will find it there, not in anything I do, on the beach or in my life.
The film at the Cape Cod [Mass.]
National Seashore visitor’s center explains how the cape was built over hundreds of thousands of years. It wasn’t there until the glaciers and ero- sion had done their work. Someday the cape may not be there again. And if God’s creation grows, changes and one day pass away, certainly our own lives and work will not last forever on this earth.
At the beach I learn to live in cre-
ative harmony with God’s plan, under- standing what I can do and what I can- not and knowing that all—in the largest sense—belongs to God. Without that understanding, learned through Scrip- ture and sacrament, in meditation and prayer, and playing on the beach, there
is no foundation to anything and I am truly building my life on sand.
When the spaceship Apollo 11 took off to land our astronauts on the moon, I was walking along the shores of Lake Michigan in Door County, Wis. The sand on the lake side of that peninsula is very good. Looking into the sky, I thought about the mighty rocket rushing toward the moon.
It was inspiring. But my call from God is to deal with this earth. Farther along the beach, I stopped thinking about the sky. Inspired by the sand, I was on my knees … scraping together the first wall of the day’s castle.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHARLES AUSTIN
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