A Pond in the Sand

"The spiritual life is one of opening ourselves so the waters of God's grace can fill us."

Trips to the Jersey Shore with my friends Dan and Rick were a summer highlight when I was a child. Between bouts of body surfing, we would often spend hours constructing elaborate sand castles just inside the high tide line. Our castles had towers, walls, moats, and ponds.

Spreading our hands in the wet sand we would make a hole that would fill with water and make a little pond until the tide would return and engulf it.

This image captivates me. The spiritual life is one of opening ourselves so the waters of God’s grace can fill us. The water of grace is all around us all the time, but in our usual closed off state it does not fill us. Through prayer, worship, study, service, and fellowship we collaborate with Jesus who carved out the open space we now are able to share.

Imagine in our life of prayer that we are gently pushing back the sand to let the water flow into our souls, refreshing and filling us.

The tide of our culture always wants to return and close us off again. The heavy cynicism, the hatefulness, the distractions, the vices and general challenges of life want to erase our open place and return us to the conformity of this world.

Here is the good news, however: in Jesus, the sand of our soul remains ever pliable and the water of grace is always at hand, waiting for even the slightest opening to gush in and slake our thirst.

Blessings,

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

Rector