By Rev. Jonathan Meyer
Dust! It’s everywhere! All you need is a flat surface, and it will build up quickly. Dust can make you cough, or sneeze — it might even make you set an alarm for 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning! I know it can because it made me do that exact thing.
When I was a kid, all I wanted to do after a long hard week of school was to sit down on Saturday morning and watch cartoons. However, as soon as my mom would rouse from her slumber, I’d have a can of Pledge in one hand and a rag in the other, and every surface in the house would have to be dust free. So, if I wanted to watch cartoons, I had to get up early.
So, I set my alarm for 6 a.m., and I would wake up and silence it quickly, so that I wouldn’t wake anyone else. I would creep down the stairs and flip the power switch on the TV while simultaneously turning the volume knob all the way to the left (I had to be quiet after all). If I did it all right, I got to enjoy my cartoons. Eventually, mom would wake up, and I’d be stuck cleaning up useless dust.
Dust is something that rings in our ears during the season of Lent. It starts out with Ash Wednesday and the reminder we hear: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19b ESV). It’s not as though that’s just a Lenten idea either; it’s all over God’s Word. We find it in the psalms reminding us how fleeting our days are, or the preacher in Ecclesiastes reminding us that our life’s pursuits are like grasping after the wind. It even carries into the Gospels as Christ talks about what will come. He makes the pointed statement about the temple and reminds us of a potent reality.
The temple was a magnificent collection of stones, but Christ reminds them: It’s all destined to be dust (Luke 21:5-9). We are reminded in this season that what Christ said about the Temple is what God’s Word says about us: It’s all dust. Everything we are, everything we work toward, everything we seemingly want in this life, it’s all just dust. Whether it’s the fleeting fancies of fame, or the meaningless movement toward more money, it’s just dust. Even the noblest tasks of pursuing virtue and raising a family all amount to something that one day will be nothing more than a Saturday morning job for a kid armed with a can of Pledge and a rag.
Unlike my mother and myself, God loves dust. He loves it so much that He carefully formed the pinnacle of His creation from it and breathed into it the breath of life. When that same dust chose evil or prideful sin, that same God took on dust, and with it all our sin, our finality, and even our futility. He nailed it all to the cross so that He might redeem you to Himself.
What’s more, He took that dust we all consider useless and transformed it with just a little water in our Baptism. He joined His Word to that water and because of that there is something useful about all this dust. It’s true that one day it will all be dust again, but until that day, there is important work to be done and that means you should be ready to go when called upon.
What will that look like? I have no idea. However, you have every reason to take care of your dust — your body, mind, and soul. Because of what Christ accomplished for you, and what He promises to accomplish through you, it has important work to do.
No matter where life finds you, your dust matters because of what God is working out. One day, soon, the work will be done, and what a day that will be! We will see just what it was that God was working out so wonderfully, never to be dust again!
The Rev. Jonathan Meyer is a theology teacher and the Dean of Chapel for Concordia Lutheran High School in Fort Wayne, Ind.