Was your day's work just erased?

In our family, our favorite beaches all have one essential ingredient - a small stream. These small little bits of water in the midst of the ocean of sand provide endless hours of digging, damming, and building. During our time in Costa Rica we were thrilled to find one such stream which wound its way through the piles of pebbles that were left in place by the previous high tide. Given that it was low tide when we found it, the five of us happily plopped ourselves down next to its small current, ready for the hours of playing that was ahead.

Even better for the play-value of this particular stream was that it didn't take a direct path across the beach, but turned a bit as it looped its way down. As it meandered, it cut into the piles, leaving an ever-deepening channel down the beach and to the water. Little slabs of sand and pebbles fell into the channel with a whoosh sound every few seconds as the stream cut deeper and deeper, carrying the sand down the beach and into the water. 
For as long as the low tide would last, the efforts of the little stream could be seen, cutting, digging and exerting its small will against the ocean's force. But when the tide rose, all evidence of the work would disappear. The channel is filled in, the pebbles re-piled, and the stream is once again pushed back to its previous path. There was no progress. There was no change from day to day. The stream will leave no mark that is not erased in less than a day by the overwhelming power of the ocean.

Or so it would seem. 

I looked up and deeper back and saw the beautiful and shaded little valley dug by the stream through the countryside. The landscape is marked and changed in fundamental ways that the tides cannot touch and even a thousand years cannot erase.

The work of the stream, like most good and enduring work, was cyclic rather than linear. It is in the midst of such work that it feels almost impossible to hold onto the hope of forward progress because recent memory only holds all the times that the forward progress was erased and the starting line was reset. Our lives are full of what seem like these never ending repetitions of driving to work, and going home, cleaning out the inbox and watching it fill up, taking the dishes out and putting them back, washing and folding the laundry.

Repeated cycles of encouraging advances followed by discouraging retreats also characterize our spiritual life. The passion that we felt for prayer last week hasn't been strong enough to pull us from bed this week. The selfishness that we thought we finally outgrew just slipped painfully back into a relationship. Just like a never ending task, these spiritual battles seem like they defy forward progress.

Or do they?

If we look up and back, we see that faithfulness in our daily, repetitive work changes those around us in ways that will never be forgotten. The cycles of dishes are feeding the children that grow up listening to the thoughts and decisions that define a family eating around a common table. Our kind reply emails are growing relationships, and our faithful work teaching those around us what it means to work ethically and with heart. The selfishness which passed through our heart almost unnoticed years ago, now attracts our immediate attention.

Sometimes the valleys are formed without intention. Other times we spend long hours thinking and worrying about the valleys that we're forming and rightly so, since these are the enduring legacies that we'll leave our family and our community. We want to be absolutely sure that we're doing what we can to pick the right path. However, truth be known, it wasn't the deep and enduring valley that drew us to that particular section of beach that day, it was the daily, faithful, subtle and completely transient work of the little stream in the sand that drew us. God's hand is on all nature of work, long-term and short, done to His Glory.

- Kevin