Life is a Sandbox
How do we live in times of uncertainty, when division is the norm?
I once applied for a position in a company with rapidly shifting sands that created uncertainty almost every day. It was their sandbox and I was an employee within it helping them achieve their goals. Change was both their strength and the core of their chaos. My interviewer asked me how I felt about ambiguity. It was a strange question. How do I feel about ambiguity? “Ambiguity just is,” I said. “It is not good or bad, right or wrong, awful or joyful. It just is. Life is full of ambiguity.” I got the job. That’s how I’m surviving the sandbox these days–embracing the uncertainty of change. This is both the strength and the chaos of the church. Sometimes it is a struggle and I desperately want to fix the sandbox—my way. I want to control the sandbox, but am I forgetting who really owns it? God owns the sandbox, not me. It is God’s sandbox and I am there as a disciple who believes in Christ’s mission to redeem the world through love. Love one another as I have loved you. That is what I do to help God in the sandbox. It is what makes me a disciple, transforming the world and identifies me as one of Christ’s disciple, working together with other disciples in God’s sandbox. I don’t get to pick and choose who enters the sandbox. God does. Nor do I get to judge them. God does that as well. My job is to love them. Period. Maybe we need to go back to the sandbox; remember who owns it, the mission, and what we are supposed to do in it. And, if we are really in sync with God, maybe we can stretch the water hose for life-giving waters and connects us to one another in the sandbox. When we love one another, then everyone will know that we are Christ’s disciples— by watching us play in the sandbox.