Shapes and Molds

Every summer we go on vacation to Sunset Beach North Carolina, and when we are there I’m a beach junkie. That’s all I want to do is be on the beach. I want it to be ninety degrees, I want the water to feel like God himself drew me a bubble bath. I want to ride enormous waves that flip and crumble my body beneath their awesome power. I want to lie in the sand, I want to read pirate stories, and play bocce ball, and dig holes until I strike water, but most of all I want to build large intricate one of a kind sand castles that I can be proud of. You see many years ago when I first started going to Sunset Beach I wanted to build sand castles like when I was a kid, but I didn’t know how to build sand castles, so I went out and bought some molds. You know the orange and blue plastic shapes that you pack sand in and then try really hard to carefully remove the sand without breaking the shape you were trying to create, only you usually fail, and it never looks the way you’d hoped. So I bought a bunch of them; long skinny ones that I suppose are the walls; and then big square ones and small square ones; and large round ones and so on. And I tried for a long time to get the sand to take the shape of the molds, but it really isn’t that easy, I would always lose a corner or the door would get smudged off, and then finally I made a whole bunch of little castle out of these molds and stepped back and looked over my work and thought, man that looks awful, it looked like a five year old made it. I felt like I had just completed a page in a coloring book. Which when your little you can take some pride in that, but as you get older and learn to draw, you don’t feel as good about coloring in someone else’s picture, not as good as drawing your own anyway. And that’s how I felt here; I wanted to make something that came from my head; that was fashioned by my hands; that didn’t look like someone’s castle. And so I started reading about sandcastle making, and I learned about how to carve them, and what tools work best, and I started making my own castles and bridges, and drip castle mountains made from drizzled wet sand. And in the end I always love what I make even if other people don’t because I made it. I took sand and gave it shape, not someone else’s premade prepackaged cookie cutter shape, but the shape I envisioned. It becomes my castle not someone else’s. To be honest with you since then I haven’t been a big fan of molds. I don’t use them for anything anymore, not for my sand, or my play dough (which I do still play with) and especially not for my relationship with God.
When I first became a Christian lots of people handed me molds. They meant well for sure, but it was really confusing for me. Some people would say, “Here’s how I get closer to God, I wake up early and spend fifteen minutes in prayer. First I thank him then I ask for forgiveness, then I thank him for forgiving me, then I tell him all the things I need, then I read one proverb and one psalm, and one verse from the New Testament. And then I’m ready to start my day. You should try it!” It was like they just handed me some plastic mold and said here’s a good shape just pack your prayers in here, or here try this coloring book. It’s easy! I would try to pray and read and spend time with Jesus the way they told me to, but there wasn’t any life in it. I felt like I was just following some recipe, or like I was trying to be someone else. But that is how I was taught so I tried to fit that mold for long time. But then I met this guy named Lance, who didn’t ever have quiet times, and by that I mean he never set aside fifteen minutes or half an hour each day to read his bible and pray. He talked to God all day long. One day Lance told me that he couldn’t stand quiet times, and that they weren’t even biblical. He said, “The bible tells us to pray on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers, and what most people do is they go into there little prayer closet and shut the door and it’s like they punch in and punch out like God is there job. They say, ’Well I’m on the clock now so I guess I’m going to talk to Jesus and then, oh has it been 30 minutes already, well God see ya tomorrow.’” Lance made such a great argument that I stopped having quiet times, and I tried using his mold. But I wasn’t nearly as focused as Lance, I kept forgetting to talk to God all day long, I would get busy and distracted, and in the end I basically stopped praying altogether. Then I read a book that talked about journaling and the importance of writing out our prayers like David did. They wanted me to write a prayer to God and then write his response, and so I could keep this conversation going with God that was all written down. I tried using that mold for a little while. But writing is hard work, my hand muscles were too weak and they would cramp up every few sentences, and so I stopped journaling after just a few attempts. I can remember feeling lost for a while. I wanted to be close with God, I wanted to really know Him, but I didn’t know how to do that for myself. I would hear about a friend who wakes up at the crack of dawn and prays for 3 hours and another friend who goes off in the woods and seeks God all afternoon, and I’d instantly feel guilty and jealous, and like a spiritual loser. Finally I realized just like I did at the beach, that what works for someone else might not work for me. Honestly molds aren’t bad when you first start, when you’re learning to draw, or making castles out of sand, or when you’re first learning how to pray. But if you want to go deeper, you have to move beyond them. You have to let your relationship with God take its own shape. You have to learn how to connect with him in the ways that work for you, not in the ways that work for everyone else.
Some people best connect with God out in nature. They like to hike or fish or sit on a hillside and talk with God. Other people don’t like to be outside but they connect with God mostly through learning, through reading books and taking classes. Other people connect best with God through their five senses. They need to light candles and put on soft music, and read and journal. Others people’s hands cramp up like mine, and so they don’t like to journal, but they feel the closest with God when they are serving others, or when they are a part some great cause. Some people grow closer to God when they are growing along side of others. They thrive in small groups and bible studies, while some other people grow closer to God when they are alone in silence, and meditation. My point is we are all different and we need to discover how we grow, how we connect with God, and what makes us come fully alive. We need to move beyond the shapes and molds, and into a real, authentic, freedom filled relationship with God.