As the days slowly grow longer and the snowdrops begin to flower, we are reminded that life is full of ongoing change and transition. Around this time of year, back in 2022, I was reminded of this while on a retreat to Holy Island in Northumbria, where I spent a very bracing morning building sandcastles on the beach with my children.

We’re a long way from a beach in Bilton, of course, but if you’ve been on holiday and tried to hold back the tide with a sandcastle, you might know how this game goes. We found some rocks to make a solid foundation, filled the gaps with sand, and built moats and walls to try to hold the incoming tide at bay. 

At first, the tide’s approach was slow, and we dared to hope that our sandcastle’s defences might hold. But as the waves advanced, the breaches and the gaps in the sandcastle grew. We scrambled to patch them up, working harder and harder, but eventually, the inevitable happened. The tide swept over, the walls crumbled, and the castle was gone.

What struck me afterward was what was left. All that remained of our sandcastle were the rocks - the foundation we had started with, but had largely forgotten about as we busily worked to build and rebuild. 

It made me think about the “sandcastles” we build in our own lives. These are often good things: work projects and ventures, families and homes, social clubs and activities. Yet sometimes, in our building we lose sight of the foundations that are necessary for all these things to flourish - the things that truly last.

There are also sandcastles we build to protect ourselves, holding back the “tide” of change or love because it feels too overwhelming. But the tide will come in at some point, sweeping away the temporary, the fragile, and the fleeting as it does so. 

This can be painful, but it is also revealing. We can often then see more clearly those things that truly matter to us: our values, our relationships, and the deep-down foundations of our identity - who we are and who God has made us to be.

At this time of year, the Christian church remembers the story of an elderly man named Simeon. Simeon lived around 2,000 years ago and had waited his whole life to see something extraordinary. Simeon had no doubt built many “sandcastles” in his life, but in one moment, these were swept away. It was in this moment - when he finally held the baby Jesus in his arms in the temple in Jerusalem - that he saw the true foundations of his faith, and when he fulfilled the purposes of his life.

Perhaps this is a message for some of us at this time of year. As we face new tides -whether changes in life, challenges, or opportunities - can we trust that what really matters will remain? Can we allow the tide of God’s love to continually reveal our true foundations, rather than clinging to the temporary sandcastles we’re building?

It’s not always easy, but the good news is that the tide always leaves something behind. And what it reveals might just surprise us. 

Every Blessing, Dan