Dust
All of God’s created works will wear out or break down or disintegrate or no longer be useful. We can’t place our hope and our certainty on continued improvement; we were designed to only last for so long. But even with that sobering thought, there’s overwhelming beauty in this reality: read on to brush away the dirt and see what lies underneath!
Sometimes imagery can really hammer a point home into our awareness of the world around us. Earlier today I was ruminating about some accidents that caused minor damage to my home. It reminded me of a picture I saw accompanying an article on the BBC once of abandoned places that had been entirely taken back over by nature. Disturbingly, my thoughts also turned toward an episode of a police investigation TV show where a body was recovered in an advanced state of decomposition. Let’s face it: things on this earth weren’t meant to last forever. Tish Harrison Warren acknowledges this succinctly at the end of her chapter on brushing teeth: “I am dust polishing dust” (48).
She’s right, you know. Look at this verse from the first book of the Bible: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19 reminds us. As much as we’d like to pretend that doesn’t happen or that we can defy time and its effects on us, we simply weren’t made to last forever. No matter how old you are, once you hit the age of ten, if you look at a picture of yourself from a decade previous, you will see the evidence staring at you back into your own eyes.
Is this cause for despair? Is this intended to be a depressing post? Of course not. It’s meant to remind us:
Not to think too highly of ourselves.
Not to place too much value on our abilities, physically or cognitively.
To revere God for His timelessness and faithfulness.
To remember our purpose in life: to praise and serve Him.
The diamond in the proverbial dust here should be this: It should awe and amaze us that God cares so much for these balls of clay bumbling around down here on earth. Look at humanity’s humble beginning as found in Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
But let us also remember what David proclaims in Psalm 8 in verses 3 to 6: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.”
So, yes, we hold both of these truths in our hands simultaneously:
We are dust, and we are decaying.
We are made in the likeness of God and are the crowning glory of His creation with our ability to think, reason, and know the difference between right and wrong. He loves us with a powerful love so much so that He has redeemed us with the sacrifice of His own Son.
Now that’s some pretty valuable dust, if you ask me!