When the Tantrum Meets the Tide

Every parent knows the moment. My friend Sarah describes her three-year-old, Eli, standing ankle-deep at Wrightsville Beach last summer, screaming at the Atlantic Ocean to stop. A wave had knocked over his sandcastle — a lopsided tower he'd spent twenty minutes building — and Eli was furious. He stomped. He pointed his finger at the surf and shouted, "No! You stop right now!" The next wave came anyway, swallowing the last of the castle walls and soaking him to the waist.

Sarah laughed — not at her son, but at the sheer absurdity of a thirty-pound boy commanding the sea.

Psalm 2 opens with a strikingly similar scene, only the stakes are cosmic. The nations rage. Kings and rulers take their stand against the Lord and His Anointed, plotting and conspiring as though their power could overturn the purposes of the Almighty. And how does God respond? "The One enthroned in heaven laughs." Not with cruelty — with the calm, unshakeable confidence of One whose sovereignty has never once been threatened.

Every empire that has set itself against God's purposes has become another sandcastle swallowed by the tide. Pharaoh raged. Herod schemed. Rome crucified. And still the Father says to His Son, "Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations."