Every created thing has a beginning and an end. Even the heavens will pass away with a great noise, the elements will melt, and the earth and the works therein will burn up. Nothing here has permanence, and that includes you and me.
The problem is that we took what God meant to be temporary
and infused so much importance into it as to make it seem permanent in our
hearts and minds. Even though we were told we would be here, but for a season,
that life is but a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes
away, we focused all our time and energy as though it were the opposite.
We joined the rat race with enthusiasm and gusto. We
prioritized our handful of years in such a way as to make God barely show in
the top ten, willfully ignoring the eternity that lies beyond this mortal coil.
I grew up in Southern California, and although much has
changed, some part of me grows nostalgic from time to time. Whenever I find
myself in the old stomping grounds, there are a handful of things I never fail
to do. First, I drive through the old neighborhood where I spent my first
thirteen years in America, stop at the ancient donut shop on the corner, have a
ham and cheese croissant, eat at an El Polo Loco, an In-N-Out, and walk the
boardwalk at Venice Beach.
During one of these trips, I happened upon a sand art
competition. It was fascinating. This wasn’t like the sandcastles of old my
brothers and I used to build when our parents found a day with enough free time
to take us to the beach. These were works of art. Faces, chariots, thrones,
intricate geometric renderings; they were beautiful.
No matter how lovely, one thing struck me with such force as
to make the entire thing strike a note of sadness in my heart. No matter how
beautiful, grand, or intricate, they were all temporary. Come the tide, a brisk
wind, or a petulant child with a penchant for destroying things, and they would
be no more.
It didn’t matter how much time and effort the individuals who
had created them expelled. Eventually, they would be gone and altogether
forgotten, save for a picture or two someone might have snapped as they stood
in their glory.
It is wisdom to learn to number our days, to look up on this
life as a journey rather than a destination, and spend the time we do have
judiciously and on things of eternal value and consequence.
For a guy who smelled like fish most days, Peter did pen a
nugget or two to rival Shakespeare himself. One of these nuggets, which should
be a prominent quote in the home of every believer that they might daily look
upon it and consider its wisdom, is this: “All flesh is like grass and all its
glory like the flowers of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls off.”
I get that it might be a bit pricy to hire someone to follow
us around and whisper ‘memento mori’ into our ear, but this verse tacked onto a
wall where you can see it every morning should serve the same purpose for far
less.
Don’t get me wrong; I’d be a hypocrite if I intimated that I
never let myself get swept away by life in some form or another, but it’s
always temporary, and I always force myself to swim back to shore.
In those moments I don’t feel like swimming back to shore, I
even find ways to justify it, telling myself it’s not so much for me as for my
girls that I’m doing what I do. Maybe that’s true. I know it is. Still, having
a good excuse doesn’t make it right.
What am I blathering on about? Life, I guess… Finding the balance between keeping a roof over one’s head and surrendering to the machine. I know my abilities and aptitudes. I know that if I give myself to it completely, I can build a magnificent sand castle indeed, one to make the other builders envious. Then again, in the end, it would be just a sand castle after all.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
1 comment:
Wow, I loved this. Sand castles is a poetic way to look at this. Life is fleeting, we are but sand castles and the tide of time will wash us away.
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