rebuilding

Last week we experienced a wonderful gift--a family within our church gave us the use of their family beach home in Sandbridge, Virginia, for a vacation. It was unbelievably wonderful. Basically, our days ran something like this:

1. get up (unbelievably early for some reason, no sleeping in on this vacation)
2. drink coffee
3. eat breakfast
4. go to the beach for a few hours
5. come back to eat lunch at the house
6. nap
7. go back to the beach for a few hours
8. eat one of andy's fabulous dinners
9. watch another episode of "How I Met Your Mother"
10. crash

Exciting times, yes? We loved it, every single minute! There was not a lot to do except enjoy the perfect weather, and contemplate small matters, and build sand castles. This part really fascinated me, because every time we went to the beach (twice a day), we (I use the term loosely here) built another sand castle, knowing full well that the next high tide would obliterate it.
This fact alone really intrigued me, because honestly, I hate having to redo certain jobs every. single. day. Like unloading the dishwasher. Washing dirty clothes. Loading the dishwasher. Sweeping dog hair off of the floor. Shaving my legs (TMI? Sorry about that.). And here we were, blithely doing work that we knew, without a doubt, would be destroyed within hours.

I wondered how God feels about the work that he does in our life sometimes--whether he gets excited when we make spiritual "progress" in an area, like prayer, or reading our Bible, or serving others, even while he knows that in a day or a week or a month, we'll get distracted or bored and move on, only to be reignited in another day, week, or month, and do it all over again. Does God enjoy our baby steps of trying to build godly lives? Even though our selfish hearts will often wash away the work, so that it has to be done again? Does he view it like I view dishes? Or is he more like Andy with cooking yet another delightful meal (thank you, Lord, that he enjoys it so much)? Or is he like my children, building sandcastles, doing the same work again with joy?