Firm Foundation
It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 7
June 15, 2025
Matthew 7:24-27
Everybody who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise builder who built a house on bedrock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It didn’t fall because it was firmly set on bedrock. But everybody who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice will be like a fool who built a house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It fell and was completely destroyed.
Matthew 7:24-27
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A couple of years ago, our daughter was building a sand castle at the beach — correction - a sand kingdom… or as she called it: Sand-topia.
It was evening and the tide was coming in. Eventually she stopped adding to her kingdom and focused instead on building sand walls and moats to hold back the water. Needless to say, her defenses didn’t stand a chance. The tide came. The walls crumbled. The moats overflowed. Sand-topia was lost.
I have never seen anyone work harder to save a sand castle. She spent more time trying to protect her kingdom than she did building it.
The next morning, we walked past the former site of Sand-topia, and something struck me. The waves didn’t “destroy” Sand-topia in the way a flood might destroy buildings and roads in real life. There was no rubble, there were no mold ridden building frames to muck out, there was no crumbled asphalt. There was nothing.
In fact, there was absolutely no evidence that anything had ever been built there. The sand was pristine, smooth, natural, as it had always been.
What if the tide is a sign of grace?
I don’t want to diminish the real destruction floods can cause. I’ve lived through Florida hurricanes. But sometimes, when natural forces move through uninhabited places, they can leave beauty in their wake. Fire can bring new life to a forest. Sinkholes in the Florida panhandle have been turned into a state park with breathtaking landscapes and even a waterfall where a river drops into one of those seemingly bottomless pits. The same sinkhole or fire or flood that would be tragic in a neighborhood can be transformative in another place.
Sometimes it feels like life is collapsing under a flood. Sometimes it actually is.
But what if, at times, the flood is actually God’s grace? What if, like the tide, God is simply trying to restore our souls the way the waves restore the beach to it’s original, pristine condition?
Spiritual growth, or sanctification, isn’t about building something new, or adding more to our lives. It’s a stripping away of everything in us that’s not of God. The Spirit’s work in us is not to sculpt a masterpiece out of a human shaped pile of garbage and sin. Instead, the Spirt gently restores us to the image of God that we were always made to reflect.
The firm foundation isn’t something we build. At best, our efforts create temporary barriers to protect our fragile lives and hearts. What if, without realizing it, we are resisting grace? What if the Spirit is simply trying to uncover the firm foundation God has already laid for us?
What might God be gently washing away in your life — not to destroy, but to restore?