Jesus taught us that the foolish man built his house upon the sand, but the wise man built his house on a much more solid surface. A single grain of sand on its own does not really amount to much. As clever and as intelligent and as well read and educated as any single one of us are, even the very best and brightest of us can only contain a vanishingly small percentage of knowledge and understanding when set beside the collective knowledge of all of us put together, especially when you include not only all of those alive right now, but also the accumulated wisdom and understanding that has been transmitted to us through the ages by people long since dead. A single grain of sand has a definite crystal structure with rigid boundaries. Like grains of sand, our own understanding is rigidly limited and defined. As a group, we may have a collective knowledge and understanding about certain things, but just like a pile of sand, our collective understanding can shift and rearrange itself depending on what theories are currently in vogue. So if we as a group are going to follow the example of the wise man and build our house of wisdom on something solid, how can we do this if we are all individually mere grains of sand? The answer is what we must choose to enter as a group into the furnace of affliction. Almost all of us have faced or are currently facing serious trials and afflictions. But so often we choose to try and face these challenges alone. And, unfortunately, too often we allow others to face their trials alone. By having the humility to allow others to practice their empathy and to fulfill their covenants to comfort us and to help bear our burdens, we are inviting them into the furnace with us. And by having the compassion and pure love of Christ to keep our eyes open and run to those who are hurting to offer up what help we can, we are boldly marching into their furnace. Not only will all of us in the furnace be refined and sanctified, but something equally important will happen. As our pride and our foolishness and our rigidly defined boundaries melt away, we will all melt into a sea of glass - solid and hard and most importantly clear enough to capture and hold the understanding and the wisdom of God. No longer will we be tempted to shift and slide with every new and passing fancy. We will hold together as one, united in the furnace of our affliction and the fire of our covenants, having helped and been helped by each other through the toughest moments of our lives. This is what it truly means to be one. Such a rock solid foundation is a house upon which the wise man would be happy to build.
