Two Sundays ago in church, I asked our congregation to join me in praying through Psalm 103 to begin our service. It was a moving time of praise, and set the tone for the rest of that morning’s worship. There is a line in that Psalm that always unnerves me and reassures me at the same time; maybe you remember it – “13As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. 14For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” And there you go. We are dust.
Why can that bother me so much? I suppose because I’d like to believe I was made of something cool like Wolverine’s adimantium, or maybe something pleasant like ‘sugar and spice and everything nice.’ Even ‘slugs and snails and puppy-dog tails’ would be better than dry mud. Ooh, I know, what about stardust? Yes, that’s better, being made out of intergalactic, interstell—‘No,’ the Bible says—‘Josh, you are dust. Normal, everyday, brush out of the dustpan into the wind kind of dust.’ Ouch.
The other day I was driving to pick up my son Nathan from school when I heard an incredibly touching story on KVIP. A young doctor noticed a very elderly man walk into the waiting room of the hospital one busy morning. The man was dressed nicely, but was obviously alone. Later when the doctor passed through that area, he again noticed the man, still waiting. Then he saw him check his watch. Over the next fifteen minutes, the young doctor caught the man checking his watch with increasing frequency, becoming obviously concerned. Knowing what a busy day it was, that it would probably be at least another hour before the man could be helped, and because of his obvious hurry, the doctor dropped what he was doing to tend to the elderly gentleman.
As the doctor finished the check-up with his grateful patient, he asked the man if he was late for what must be an important meeting? The elderly man smiled and said, “It is an important meeting, but I’m not late yet.” As the physician inquired further, he discovered this 80-something year-old was a devoted husband, and that the important meeting was with his wife at a special care facility. “She has Alzheimer’s” said the man, “and she wouldn’t know it even if I was late. In fact, she hasn’t recognized me in five years. All the same, I’ve never missed a lunch date with her, and I don’t intend to miss it today, either.” The man’s story moved the young doctor, but still, he couldn’t help but wonder out loud why he would keep going to her, over and over, every day, if his wife didn’t even know who he was? The elderly man smiled knowingly and patted the physician on the arm. “Because I still know who she is. I still know who she is.”
There are two sides to being known for ‘what’ and ‘who’ we really are. On the one hand, it’s incredibly sobering-- It’s a reality Check. Reality = DUST.
DUST
In the beginning, God took the dust of the earth into His hands and gave humanity its essential dignity as He “…created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). There was an incredibly destiny for this dignified dust called humanity, but along the way it was hijacked by sin’s Alzheimer power, so that we chose to forget God’s plan for us in favor of our own plan— and it was impossible for the memories of original identity & purpose to grow back on their own.
God reminds us of our sobering origins as dust because, as a race, we have pride issues, and ‘God opposes the proud.’ God reminds us of our origins because it points us in the direction of humility when we start to think too highly of ourselves and ‘what we’re capable of.’ Like military recruits, God has to break us down to size before He is able to rebuild us into something stronger. He cuts us off at the knees and we feel the crippling effects of admitting dependency, but once we accept it, that we aren’t ‘self-made men,’ neither self-created nor possessing any sort of inherent ‘self-worth’ in the substance of our origin before being taken into the hands of God— once we admit that who and what we are without God leads only to catastrophe— God then opens up a second chance opportunity for us to embrace His plan for our lives. God makes it necessary for us to admit and accept what we are without Him so He can then reveal to us what we were meant to be with Him… “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Grace = DESTINY!
DESTINY
On the one hand, being fully known by God is incredibly sobering. On the other hand, it’s incredibly comforting! In response to our rebellion, God sent “…his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3), and He lived his entire life in perfect memory of His Father’s perfect plan as a ‘do-over’ in your place. He also took upon Himself all the results of humanity’s (your) rebellious amnesia. His name is Jesus, and the results of sin’s Alzheimer power and God’s righteous anger, poured out on Jesus, killed Him as it should have killed us. Today, God is telling you He can rebuild and restore your identity by reminding you of your destiny if you’ll believe and accept this testimony of what Jesus did on your behalf. When you do, you are promised the very life and mind of the resurrected Jesus, unshackled from sin’s Alzheimer power and equipped with the capacity to clearly see, understand and live out a new life according to God the Father’s reinstated plan!
So the Bible says we're 'dust.' Don't panic! We may be dust, but the One whose we are waits to reveal again that we are dust with a destiny! And what is the destiny of dust? The destiny of dust is to be made into the likeness of God’s Son, so that we might fully experience all the benefits of His rich inheritance as co-heirs with Christ, both in this life and eternity (Rom. 8:28-30).
Even when you forget about God, when you join in Peter’s denial, when you stand Jesus up for a ‘quiet time’ appointment, push Him away because He’s unrecognizable to you in some crisis of pain, or simply ignore Him because the ‘Christian’ label has become inconvenient or embarrassing, even then, God still knows who you are, He’ll never forget, and He will keep coming to you— again and again and again. This is unspeakably encouraging, especially for those of us who wrestle with who we are out of a sense of brokenness, confusion or deception. The comforting side of being ‘fully known’ by God is that your identity is not determined or defined by your behavior, the quality of your relationships, the sum total of your accomplishments or the negative impact of your failures. Instead, your identity is determined by the One Person who cannot be confused, misled, tricked or coerced into forgetting who you are. Your identity is held secure in the hand of the unchanging, eternal, almighty, omniscient, omnipotent God of the universe, who ‘knows your frame’ even when you don’t know yourself, and ‘who remembers that you are dust’ bound for glory even when sin’s Alzheimer power tries to rob you of your sacred, God-given destiny: if you are saved, your identity is defined by the Life of Christ, and your destiny is His shared glory!
28"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified." (Rom. 8:28-30)
God knows who you are. And His perspective is the one that defines you.
Hi, it's a very great blog.
ReplyDeleteI could tell how much efforts you've taken on it.
Keep doing!
I've always been intrigued by the the idea of dust/dirt in the Bible: dust to dust, He scooped dust and made man, son of dust, you will shake the dust from your feet, etc.
ReplyDeleteA thought to play with: We are made from the dust of previous humans (DNA included). In a way, our bodies are a reincarnations of previous people (so, reincarnation could be argued to exist). However, the soul is unique (not of dust). As such, (paraphrased) do not fear him who can only kill the body (dust), but fear Him who can damn the soul. In a sense, don't worry about reincarnation (dust-to-dust), worry about the destination of the soul.
Another thought to toss around: if man is dust, the apostles were literally rejecting the people of a town when they shook the dust from their feet.
Ha!, I like that second thought in particular, the apostles shaking the dust off their feet being an eerily literal metaphor (huh?) for the rejection of a townspeople. Thought-provoking. May make it into a sermon one of these days.
ReplyDeleteI could use clarification on the first thought... we are procreated 'from the dust of previous humans' or created 'from the dust of previous humans?' Which were you saying?
Actually, I'm not sure I could agree with either, unless I'm completely misunderstanding. Adam technically was the only human created from dust, and as he was the first... no previous 'human dust' was there in the mix. The rest of us, Eve included, had our beginning in 'flesh.' But there is, of course, the overarching understanding of our origin, that even if we were procreated, and came from flesh ourselves, we understand that historically speaking, 'we come from dust.'
Okay, that was way overkill, my bad. I did understand your point though. Thank you for that.
Josh
I suppose the term "reincarnation" is too loaded. It would be extremely arrogant for me to try and bend its meaning.
ReplyDeletePhysical "recycling" would be more appropriate, as we are made of the same elements of the periodic table as Adam. It's the dust that is reused, recycled, and (my inappropriate usage) reincarnated. I was trying to emphasize the re(carnal)nated nature of human dust being made into flesh, the same dust that made our ancestor's flesh.