It all matters <3
On Sunday evening, we watched a guy digging himself a huge hole in the sand. He worked and worked as we sat waiting for the sun to the set. Shovel after shovel was heaped in a circle around his efforts. By the time it was over, he was deep enough that all you could see was his head.
Why he did it, I have no idea. A few people were sitting near him reading and watching the surf. I assume they were with him and perhaps happy he was occupying himself and burning off what must have been a huge amount of energy.
I know the turtle people don’t like this kind of thing because it disrupts whatever it is the turtles do at night. All I could think of was some unsuspecting person taking a late night beach walk and hurting themselves as they tumbled in.
The next morning, the tide and such had done some work and all that was left was a melted mound of sand in a circle around a large, shallow indentation. There was evidence that something had happened there to mar the smooth white surface of the beach, but the depth of his labor had been erased.
It remained there until this morning when a tractor with a rake attached circled around it time and again, finally smoothing away the last of this fellow’s work. What is seen is a stretch of sand that looks like all the other stretches of sand that line the coast around here.
What is unseen is the memory I have of watching him, the memory he has of digging it, the thoughts of all who saw it or tripped into it and the guy who was running the tractor. And all of our lives and the people we influence and touch and care about…all of that is unseen.
Which brings me to today’s point from dear Oswald.
There is a difference between the actual and the real of this world.
“By actual is meant the things we come in contact with by our senses, and by real, that which lies behind, that which we cannot get at by our senses.”
Oswald Chambers, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount; God’s Character and the Believer’s Conduct, Discovery House Publishers, 1960, Pg. 27
Using 2 Corinthinas 4:18, where we learn that we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, because what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal; Chambers reminds us that unless we are born again we cannot understand and apply the teachings of Christ in a way that sanctifies and regenerates us.
Jesus is more than a great teacher. Because of His death and resurrection, He is our substitution, our salvation, our sanctification, and our life.
What we cannot see is more real than what we can see. People we no longer see, historical markers that are gone, dynasties that have risen and now cease to exist…these have all left their marks that are not gone, just unseen. The things we believe of Christ’s teachings and how we apply them in our daily lives, these are unseen.
But all matter much.
Faith, hope and love are unseen.
The courtroom of heaven is unseen.
The Lamb who is able to open the scroll is unseen.
The blood that covers all our sins is unseen.
Here on earth. But not in heaven. In heaven all that matters is seen.
And apparently it matters much if we are born again or not. I have heard many say (and I have thought the same) that they don’t know how people go through difficult circumstances without knowing Jesus. But the truth is, the “real” is, we must ponder how they go through all circumstances…good, bad, extraordinary, ordinary…without knowing Him; without being born again.
For without being born again, we just live in the actual and never the real.
Oh, for more grace to discern the eternal from the temporary; to understand more about what is unseen.
Blessings friends <3