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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion March 3, 2006 “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return” |
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Frontline Devotion for Friday, March 3, 2006 by Mike Martine
(The following devotion was my sermon on Ash Wednesday. mm)
Dust. We are here tonight to remind ourselves of a simple truth. That we are, in many ways, dust. We are here to remind ourselves that our wondrous bodies are constructed of humble materials; that in some respects, we are little different from the stuff we remove from our homes each week with a vacuum or broom. A fact that my grandma used to make fun of with the old joke: Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, anyone coming or going under your bed?
But there is another side to this story…a gospel, or good news side. And that side is this: Guess what? We are dust, but God really likes dust.
If you don’t believe it, look at the world around us. Everything that’s a solid breaks down, eventually, into dust. What is a tree but beautifully assembled sawdust? Scrape a piece of coal and you get coal dust. Dried dirt becomes dust. Any stone can be turned to dust just as any plant or animal will return to it. And this year “Stardust” became more than just a great old song by Hoagie Carmichael, it was the name of the space probe that flew to meet a comet and then brought us back bits of the material flying off that comet, bits making up the tail. Dust, scientists tell us, essentially unchanged since the beginning of the cosmos. Dust that has never experienced a change in temperature. Dust that will likely reveal many secrets as to how God knit this wondrous universe together. Dust that will show just how important “dust” is in the universe.
Dust is humble; dust is elemental; but the truth is God likes dust, a lot. And so while we remind ourselves of our humble construction and limited capabilities, we need to also remember that we are what the creator chooses. We are loved. We are dust, this is true, but the fact that we are loved makes us beautiful dust.
Most of us, when we think of Ash Wednesday equate the day and coming season with discipline and self-punishment. Discipline is good and essential, but the punishment stuff is, I think, often over done. Punishment seldom brings about the changes we want to make in our lives or in the lives of others. It might make a temporary change, but it seldom makes a positive, heartfelt change. Ash Wednesday is a time to remember our sinfulness and feel appropriately sorry for it. But it is not a time to feel bad about being human. Human is what we are; dust is what we are; and that is, as we have said already, beautiful in many ways.
Dust is the essence of a thing when it has been reduced to almost nothing. The discipline of Lent, the discipline we should enter this day and season remembering, is that we are called to strip away the unnecessary, the confusing, the wants from the needs in our life and leave self-delusions behind. We are called to return to the simple truth of our faith. We are called to remember the fact that our father has called us to journey on the path of the son. A journey of love and compassion for others; the journey of the kingdom. And the purpose of taking on our simple disciplines on this day, the “forced hardships” we’ll joyously relinquish with Easter, should be to help us strip away the fluff, the unnecessary from our lives and bring us back to the core purpose and truth of our existence. The dust of our faith, if you will.
Take this day, this season, to return to what is essential to the life of a Christian. Return to the core of faith and to the purpose of Christ. Take up the journey of Jesus anew, and you will find, on the road that led him to the cross of our redemption, peace, love, and a renewed call to embrace the dust of this world even as our heavenly father has embraced us. AMEN.
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All are welcome to join and share in our Devotional Ministry on the "Frontlines" of the world. Frontline Devotions are sent via email daily. Sign up by clicking on the box to the left. Pastor Dave welcomes feedback. Contact him at pastordave@goodshepherdonline.org. |
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