Thursday,
May 20, 2021
Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the
ground. He breathed the breath of life
into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. Genesis 2: 7
You’ve heard (perhaps many times) the words of
Adam and Eve’s punishment after their sin in the garden of Eden:
“…in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Genesis 3:19 KJV
This was, of course, God speaking the awful words
of consequence following humankind’s disobedience. And thus the die was cast, that we all follow
the same path, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
We hear those words at funerals, and there is
nothing so sobering and thought-provoking, primarily because it brings our own human
fragility into full view. The statistic
on mortality has always been one birth = one death,
separated by a few years.
There is nothing quite so disturbing and humbling
as seeing a friend or family member with whom you spent time, joy, laughter,
toil, and tears, lying lifeless, unmoving in the casket before you, devoid of
spirit; just a shell of dust. The hushed
whispers of gathered mourners adds to the surreal otherworldliness of such
moments. Frankly, it makes the hair on
the back of one’s neck stand up, rigid.
Or it should!
But the problem with such scenes isn’t the hushed
whispers, or the weak attempts to frame a maudlin, creepish moment with funny
stories of better times. Our dilemma facing
the funeral bier is that we spend too much thought on the dust, and not enough
on what’s missing from the dust.
When God created humans, from dust into man’s body,
then bone to woman’s body, the only things visible were flesh, bone and blood,
re-formed dust! We tend to trust our
senses, and so we recognize each other first by the physicality of our
being. But notice Scripture declares
that Adam did not become a man, nor Eve a woman, until God breathed
the breath of life into them.
It is the gift of God that transforms dust into being. And without that we are but piles of dust
waiting for the vaccuum cleaner…unknowing, unmoving, unthinking, and un-being.
Considering that unmitigated fact, isn’t it rather odd that
we invest so much in developing and maintaining our physical, or dustly
bodies, and so little in the growth of spirit?
Many families spend a thousand dollars or more a month on health
insurance, and (if they give at all) find it hard to let go of a $10-bill to
the offering plate. We work out an hour
a day with Nordic Track, but pray only when trouble hits. We spend time in intense psychotherapy with
the counselor, but can’t find ten minutes a day with the Wonderful Counselor.
For You Today
When I find my priorities a little out of order I call a time-out. I then call a family meeting of me-myself-and-I
to the table and do a little taking stock of where I went off the track.
Is it time for your family reunion of
dust and Spirit?
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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