It’s crazy the things God uses to teach us truths. I’m pretty convinced that He tries more often than we notice.
A couple of weeks ago, I was hanging out on the beach and decided to make one of those drip castles. There may be a more proper word for it, but I don’t know what it is. You know, though, when you drip the really wet sand and see how high you can get it to go?
I started by digging a hole, because I needed a reservoir of water to work with. Once I had a little puddle to start with, I began taking handfuls of sand and letting the sand drip through my fingers to make this little blobby heap.
Sometimes my manmade reservoir would dry up and I’d just have to sit there and wait for another wave to come fill it up again and then I could continue to work.
My blobby little pile was getting some pretty good height but, as I continually dripped onto the top, it wouldn’t be strong enough to hold up and would topple over.
I realized that I needed to to build up the sides – the parts surrounding the middle – as well.
I also realized that some sides were weaker and had to be built up repeatedly. They needed continuous attention. Some sides were stronger and didn’t need very much attention at all.
I got tired of playing in the sand after awhile and walked away. It only took about a minute of neglect for my water reservoir to dry up.
The tower lasted for a little while longer. I watched it for a little bit and it was fine, but then it started to fade.
Without constantly being poured onto, constantly being built up, it couldn’t maintain.
It flattened.
A few minutes later, you couldn’t even tell there was ever anything there.
I feel like there’s a lot of application I could put to my blobby little castle, but the thing the Lord spoke to me was,
“Community vs. Self Investment”.
My little water reservoir is the space I create and allow the Lord to fill and my blobby little drip castle is me and my community.
I can do nothing without that space the Lord has filled!
I am empty and literally have to sit and wait for the Lord to fill me up. But if I don’t create that hole, that space, for Him to come meet me in, then there’s nothing to be filled and I’m working in vain.
Then, there’s me and my friends…
When I was only dripping onto ‘myself’, the middle of my tower, it got really big and tall and a little even dropped down only my ‘community’ on the outside, but not enough to hold it all up.
It came crashing down over and over again.
See, we weren’t intended to invest in ourselves solely. God didn’t give us gifts to edify ourselves. He doesn’t give us words of encouragement to only speak over our own life.
He gives us gifts to build up the saints [Ephesians 4:12].
He gives us words of encouragement to share with others [I Thessalonians 5:11]
We were meant to build up one another. [Romans 14:19]
When we only focus on ourselves, everything crumbles.
When we focus on those around us, it creates a foundation of community that lends support to allow us to get to bigger and higher places that we could never reach on our own.
It’s not a pretty castle.
Like community, it’s messy and sometimes ugly, but it works. In it’s own way, it’s a kind of beautiful mess and it keeps getting bigger and growing into something more.
Just like the castle, some of those people around us need constant pouring into. They’re vulnerable to attack and to failure, but they need attention, or community, that much more.
Other people around us are pretty self-sufficient. They don’t need constant checking on. Maybe they have their own foundation of friends holding them up, but they’re still there to lend support.
The truth is, everybody has a sand castle.
Are you building up that foundation or trying to do it on your own?
What kind of castle are you building?
How’s your reservoir?
Community is hard work.
It’s a lot easier to isolate and try to do it on your own, but that’s not the original design. We were created to come together, to work together, to build each other up.
That’s how we build the big castles!
