sandcastles

I recently read "And the Angels Were Silent" by Max Lucado.

It's a really good book. There's this one chapter where it talks about the worldliness of society compared to an eternal perspective, and it ties it in to being childlike.

Being childlike in faith seems like a one-dimensional thing - to be childlike means to be clueless, to trust blindly in your parents, and be dependent. It seems, though, that there's still more, as Lucado writes about building sandcastles.

The basic gist is that when children go to the beach, they spend all their time building castles with the sand. When the sun sets and the tide rolls in, they watch as their castles crumble, not expecting anything more. It's like the way I have fun building this intricate string of dominoes in some pattern, and then the best part is knocking over the first domino and watching the others fall in succession. Destruction is a natural part of both sandcastles and dominoes.

Humans, however, watch their castles fall and are desperate. They want more. They fall on their knees and try to protect their castle from the inevitable, then lay there in deep sorrow when they finally realize they can do nothing. Their lives are not long enough; their castles were not tall enough...

He gives and takes away, does He not?