The Ocean in a Hole
Story★★★★W. A. Criswell, in a sermon on the Trinity, said, “In reading the life of Augustine, I note that one day, when he was walking along the seashore, he saw a little boy digging a trench in the sand.
He walked over to the lad and asked him what he was doing. The little fellow replied, ‘Sir, I am making a trench.’ ‘Why are you doing it?’ asked Augustine. The little lad replied, ‘I am going to empty the sea into my trench.’ The great thinker, the greatest of the Latin Fathers, continued his walk and mused: ‘So the lad thinks that he is going to empty the sea into the little trench he has made in the sand. Sometimes we are like that.
We propose to encompass the infinitude of God in the small limits of our mind.’ “
The point
Augustine's encounter with a boy trying to empty the sea into a hole in the sand illustrates the folly of trying to fit the infinite God into a finite mind.