Now it’s one thing to book a holiday at the beach, but the weather while you are on holidays cannot be booked.
Needless to say, we had 10 days of rain while we were away!
Desperate not to waste a holiday at the beach, I decided to venture on to the beach anyway.
While I was on the beach in the wind and the rain, I noticed the way the sand shifts and changes in a dramatic way.
One day as I headed on to the beach to fish I looked behind me to find my boots were leaving massive, deep footprints in the sand.
However, by the time I returned an hour or so later following the same route, any sign of the footprints had been totally erased by the wind and the rain.
On another occasion after some particularly wild weather, I went to the beach for a walk and noticed that the tide and the wind had significantly altered the beach, shifting a significant amount of the sand from one end of the beach to the other.
Observing this phenomenon made me think of something Jesus once said in the Sermon on the Mount.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching his disciples about the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus ends his sermon, he finishes by explaining who is in the Kingdom and who is out.
He says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21, NIV).
Then he says, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matthew 7:24-27).
This story that Jesus tells about the wise and foolish builders is symbolic of those who are wise in the Kingdom of God and those who are foolish.
The person who listens to the words of Jesus and lives or ‘practises’ as one of his disciples is like a wise builder who builds their house on the rock.
On the day of disaster when wild weather and storms come, the house is safe and sound high up on the immovable solid rock.
However, Jesus also says that anyone who hears his words and chooses not to practise them – who chooses not to become his disciple – Jesus says that person is like a foolish builder who builds their house on the sand.
Building your life on Jesus’ teaching is like building a house on the secure foundation of a rock.
Throughout the course of the Sermon on the Mount, we come to understand that this is the case because Jesus is the way to the Kingdom of God and the way to the life which is ‘blessed’ according to the Kingdom of God.
What is curious is that in the story, Jesus does not tell us what it means to build our life on the sand.
Arguably, it means many things, perhaps as many things as there are grains of sand on a beach.
What is clear is that building your life on anything but Jesus and his words is as disastrous as building a house on the sand, which shifts and changes with the tide, the wind and the waves.
When you build your life on Jesus, you are building your life on a foundation that will never change and that is safe during the most severe of storms, even the storm of death.
In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,” which reminds us that for those who are his disciples, there is life after death.
This life comes because at the end of his ministry, Jesus died on a cross and rose again so that those who follow him as his disciples – that is people who obey his words and practise them – can receive eternal life in heaven.
Rev’d Jacob Kelly
St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Kyabram
14°C