Becoming Dust.
From ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This letter will be best read slowly, ponder each word with a pause and savour each truth in reflection, i hope it brings clarity and grace as we continue in our life’s journey to someday become dust.
All men return to dust simply because they were formed from dust.
God, in the bid to create something out of nothing for his sovereign pleasure, stooped down and formed man’s substance from the formless dust of the earth.
God, a LORD of beauty and purpose, weaved fine details and patterns into this being as he created man’s substance with compassion and love. After this lifeless being was completed, God bent towards man’s frame and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and alas, man from nothing came into life.
Man, a paradox of existence, formed from the lowliness of dust and clay, yet having in his very being an essence of beauty and worth proceeding from the sovereign Lord of all creation.
Man was all shades of beautiful and indeed was perfect until his lips kissed that fruit of rebellion and his tongue tasted of that bitter-sweet juice of depravity that bled from the fibre of the fruit of disobedience that hung seductively on the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. With that one bite, his world came crumbling before him as his now sin-dainted eyes beheld his nakedness.
Man’s reward was as steep as his disobedience: “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Gen 3:19). Man was banished from the presence of God with nothing but fig leaves as clothes to cover his shame and disgrace. From that very fruit of good and evil proceeded one of the greatest evils that still plagues humanity until the end of this present world: death.
Through the disobedience of one man, death came into this world, and although by the obedience and suffering of a greater man, Jesus the God-man, life and reconciliation came to us on this side of eternity. But still, the reality of our sin corrupted existence is that we shall all one day return to the dust wherewith we were formed.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes is not simply a liturgical chorus to be echoed by the pastor in a funeral, it represents a consistent truth about the fallen man repeated timelessly through the pages of scriptures and while growing up this maxim had always left me feeling unsettled because death was something unerving to think about but the olderi grew the more i reconciled the reality of death as of life too. All men cease to exist; no man has or can escape this inevitable end.
Man is but dust, our frame is frail, and our beauty like the flower that blossoms beautifully by day and by evening, when the winds of seasons have passed it by, it fades into nothing, it is gone, and the place where it grew shall know it no more. To locate man’s existence in the history of humanity is to find nothing but a blip in the radar of eternity. His days are like a grass withering from the passing of time; he spends his life like a tale that is told, even the fullest of his years still end with a sigh when his breath gives way, and he returns to dust.
For the Lord has laid the days of man from beginning to the end, and not one day shall man surpass, and when the dawn of his life comes, God will say unto the children of man, return unto dust.
But even in this difficult truth lies a liberating reality of human existence, to be transient doesn’t mean to be without worth or essence or beauty or love or meaning or purpose. It means to embody all of life’s boundless potentials and yet be bound by time’s passing nature. It is to see that each day is a gift to be lived in gratitude, each day should be lived with purpose, each day should be sent in eternity by living in light of that which is to come.
Life is incomplete without death, and life’s meaning is best savoured in retrospect of the reality of death. The transience of life makes it a fragile gift to be treasured; the fleeting nature of our light calls us to burn it away for that which is worth burning for. To live is to die, and for the man whose life is exchanged with the life of Christ, to die is to live forever.
All men die, all men become dust. We do not live forever like a candle we are lit, burning brightly, we illuminate our world, but with each flicker of light we exude, we wax out, we slowly burn out until we burn away. This we understand well enough, our minds are brought even to this reality as we read this letter, our minds remember that there is an end to life when we suffer grief or when we pass through the silent streets of the cemetery where people who once lived lie with no more breath in their lungs. But what manner of people should we become in the light of this knowledge or in consciousness of this reality?
“An unexamined life isn’t worth living” said Plato but more than the speculative words of a philosopher, the words of an eternal God in scriptures echo our response to the reality of our fleeting lives.
“Teach us to number our days,” cried Moses in Psalms 90, “that we may gain a heart of wisdom”. A heart of wisdom is a response to numbered days; we won’t live carelessly when our minds remind us that each passing day is bringing us closer to our last day.
Moses, a man of God, understood this truth of our existence; he was no philosopher in the modern sense of that word, but a meek man who walked with God and led what is by far the greatest number of people ever recorded in history from the land of Egypt to the promised land.
This man knew death more than any pastor would ever know, he watched the entire generation of Israel who rebelled against God turn into dust, he saw the entirety of man’s life and at the end of it all surrounded by bones and monuments of the things they have gone through he prays that our hearts will gain a wisdom not from knowing more than we presently do but from numbering our days. A wise man numbers his days so he lives each day thoughtfully in a manner that will bring him a spark of joy as he looks back in retrospect on his life well spent.
Johnathan Edwards, a man who understood this truth, resolved in his lifetime not to do anything that he would be afraid of doing if it were the last minute of his life. Such a resolution reflects a man who lived with eternity stamped on his eyeball.
Jesus Christ reflects this truth in his pattern of living: “I must work the work of my father, now that it is day for night cometh when no man can work”. Although Christ did not return to dust simply because he was a God-man, he still mirrored to us what living with the view of death is. Christ knew he’d die someday, and he knew that the redemption of man was hinged on his death on calvary and so each day he spent it doing that which delighted the heart of the Father. He took each step with purpose and grace.
Death happens to us all, but some die graciously, having lived fully, and others die painfully after having lived for nothing.
How do you want to die? With a smile or a sigh. Life is beautiful, and although death tried to rid life of its beauty, it only amplified it. Death has helped me see that life ought to be savoured by living slowly, by loving God and serving his purposes, by loving people and making memories, by chasing that which transcends time and borders into eternity.
Let no man fear death, for it is a surety; death, however, is not as painful as a life lived with so much regret.
Now that breath reverberates through your lungs, reconcile your heart with God, the one who makes this fleeting life worth it. Live a life of wisdom by numbering each passing day, live slowly so you can think deeply about God, the one who has made all things beautiful. Do not withhold love, love liberally, spend your life chasing not the dust from which you were formed, but for fulfillment that is not found in your self but in the identity of one who is in and of God. Journal your days as you tell the story of God’s providence in your life, write your epitaph, let it be something you want to be remembered for, touch the lives of others and the world if the Lord wills, and live each day to the fullest. Life is truly a gift, and sometimes a long life doesn’t mean a full one. Seek a full life, one of purpose, of beauty, of truth, of meaning, and of love.
From dust I was formed. To dust I shall return. But let no man say our life isn’t worth it because it is, for although we become dust, we shall one day live on, free until then let us live by embracing death. The path to a fuller life is reconciling with our inevitable death.
Prayer: Teach us to number our days, stamp eternity on our eyeballs so we live each day with wisdom, chasing that which is above where Christ is seated.
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