If the Sun Won't Come

“Do you think we can build a sandcastle today, Daddy?” Eva asked, hopping up and down and tugging on his coat cuff. “You promised we’d build one soon!”

“I suppose we can,” her father replied, smiling down at her sparkling brown eyes. “We’ve got to be home to Aunty in an hour, though.”

“We can build one in an hour!” Eva squealed, dashing off to a short sandy strip that hugged a tranquil stretch of water.

Eagerly, the girl dug her hands into the grainy ground and began to pile clumps of sand into a fortress.

The place where they walked was a simple, ugly little shoreline on the coast of Southeast England. The gray sand Eva was excavating was strewn with sharp shale and seaweed—a beach not ideal for sunbathing. Most of the year, the water was too rough and dangerous for swimming. The rugged cliffs that marched above the ocean were more foreboding than picturesque. In fact, the whole area was much too commonplace and dismal for tourists accustomed to Brighton or the Suffolk Coast. Only the inhabitants of the old fishing village of Cot’s Haven, a white cluster on the green-turfed cliffs overlooking the beach, cared much for their outlet to the sea.

But that was all right with six-year-old Eva Starbuck. According to her, she and her father did not need anyone else’s company. Except her aunt Agnes and a few little friends in the village and at the girls’ school, her father, Ulysses Starbuck, was her entire world. If the rocky beach was a little lonely, that only meant that there was more of it for the two of them to share.

“Come on, Daddy!” Eva called, swatting auburn curls out of her face. “Hurry and come make the moat. We don’t have much time!”

Ulysses quickened his pace only slightly as he walked toward his daughter. The moment he was experiencing, watching Eva dance by the shore as her hair blew about her freckled face, was a bit of his life that he wanted to remember for a long time.

When at last he reached the construction site, he was just in time to keep the beginnings of her unstable castle from toppling over.

“Aha, you saved it!” Eva cried. “Now you can dig the moat!”

For the next half hour, the two labored to strengthen their fortress against all enemies. But as they worked, the growing wind forced the tide to advance upon the castle. Finally, a great roller rushed in without warning and leveled their work with one blow.

“Well, we enjoyed ourselves anyway,” Ulysses chuckled as the water sank back to reveal a small heap where the castle had been.

“But the castle’s gone,” Eva complained, scooping up a handful of their creation and dropping it with a thud into the water. “Why didn’t you save it again, Daddy?”

“I can’t keep everything bad from happening, sweetheart,” he shook his head, “even though I wish I could. But I can’t keep the waves from coming in any more than I can make the sun come up in the morning.”

As they strolled leisurely back down the beach to a little path leading up the chalky cliffs, Eva walked with her little left hand in her father’s large right one, leaning her head against his arm.

“I don’t like it when bad things happen, Daddy,” she said.

“Well, neither do I,” he replied, taken aback by his daughter’s unusually thoughtful mood.

“And you can’t stop all of them from happening, can you?”

“No, I can’t. Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering,” the girl murmured, “what if the sun didn’t come up one morning? What if it were always dark, forever and ever?”

“Sweetheart, you don’t have to worry about that,” Ulysses replied, bending down and kissing her. “I can’t make the sun rise, but God brings it up every morning.”

“Mightn’t He forget to do it one day?”

“He can’t forget, Eva.”

“Oh, well,” the girl smiled, “then I won’t worry about it.”