from dust to dust

Inconsequential residue or miracle of creation?  Major annoyance or glimpse of the eternal? Dust sparkling in the sunlight…

Did you, as a kid (or maybe even last week) ever hang your head off the side of the couch and watch as the light caught the dust particles floating through the air? I remember spending hours (or what felt like hours in a young girl’s mind) hanging upside down on sofas, chairs and beds just watching the light stream through the windows and glimmer on the floating dust particles. I guess today’s over-stimulated kids would say that I lived an extremely boring existence. Maybe I did, but I found myself doing the exact same thing in adult-style just the other day.

As I was dusting the living room, the mid-morning sun came glinting through one of the windows and I noticed the dust particles glow as they floated through the light. Each tiny, inconsequential flake of dust glimmered and shimmered like iridescent diamonds as they floated gracefully back to settle on the surface of my furniture. As they flittered down toward the ground, I thought about what the Bible says about dust. Amazing that a book that discusses the many attributes of the Creator of the Universe actually takes the time to mention dust! And believe it or not, there’s a good reason why.

You see, according to the Bible, you ARE dust. Psalm 103:14 says: “For He knows how weak we are; He remembers we are only dust.” (NLT)

And  Job asks God: “Remember that you made me from dust–will you turn me back to dust so soon?” (NLT)

And way back in the beginning of Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve: “…By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” (NLT)

Also in Psalms, it is said: “He stoops to look down on heaven and on earth. He lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump. He sets them among princes, even the princes of his own people!” (NLT)

There are many other references to dust and dirt and mud and clay and…you get the picture. The point is: you ARE dust. In the great, big, giant scheme of the cosmos, you are nothing more than a tiny, microscopic speck of dust. Your life is a brief blip on the radar screen of existence, you will leave and then, POOF! You won’t! Sobering thought, no?

And yet, for all your finite, microscopic, inconsequential dustiness, God created you–on purpose. God created YOU. Did you catch that? GOD CREATED YOU! He thought about you long before your parents met. Long before they discussed names for you, decorated your room, dreamed of whether you were a girl or a boy…golly, long before THEY were born, He thought of YOU. He WANTED you. Not only did He want you, He has offered to lift you out of the dirt of your life and give you a place of honor among the princes of heaven. Wow!

So the next time, you’re dusting–or sweeping the floor, or wiping that lint fleck off your shoulder–think about this. In this great big world of dusty dirt, you–YOU–are one tiny, glimmering, shining, shimmering, hopeful ray of God’s love. Brief though your life may be, you–YOU–were designed by Him, for Him, to love Him and to share His love with others. What a powerful thought, just from dusting! I wonder what would happen if I mopped?