Christian Living
One of the many things sold at my job is a bag of dirt, infused with various gemstones or fossils. People can then take this bag, empty it into a tray, and go panning for gemstones. It's neat, kind of fun, and who doesn't like pretty rocks? I was tasked recently with restocking these bags, and discovered that they come in boxes. A funny thing happens when you put bags of dirt in boxes; all the bags assume this vaguely squarish shape, conformed and molded by the influence of the other bags on them.
You could say the same thing happens to people, especially considering that we're dirt.
Way back in Genesis 2, we see God making man, out of a pretty humble ingredient list consisting solely of dirt plus God's own breath. Dirt is our heritage; it's where we come from, and it's also where we're going. God tells Adam this in Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve have rebelled against God: "From dust you were formed, and to dust you will return." I hear that a lot of pregnant women have inexplicable cravings to eat dirt, and I wonder if that's God's idea of a practical joke.
At any rate, it's pretty safe to say that we're dirt. And I think that, by looking at dirt, we can find out some things about ourselves. If you really want to, go outside and put some dirt in a plastic baggie so you can play with it while you're reading.
Dirt has no shape of its own. If you're holding that bag of dirt in your hands, you'll notice that you can form it pretty easily. Squeeze the bottom and you can force it all to the top. Cram it in a small space and it'll squish up to fit. Let it out of the baggie and it won't have any shape at all; it'll just kind of slide into a pile, still formed by the forces of gravity. Put it outside and it will blow away.
Dirt is shaped and formed by all the forces that act on it. So are you. Just like dirt, you are who you are because of the things you have been through and the people who have influenced you. I'm sure you can look back on your life and see the people and the events which changed your life. If those people weren't in your life and if those events had never happened to you, you would be a completely different person. You've been, for the most part, shaped by what's happened to you. Some people say this as if it's a bad thing, but it's neither good nor bad, merely true.
Something in life is going to form you. You're dirt. You don't have a shape of your own. You get squeezed and crammed into small spaces and blown around by the wind, and you assume the shape that you have to assume in order to get by in life. Even if you're the kind of person who tries to take control of your circumstances, tries to be proactive and make your own decisions, even that attitude is a result of people who taught it to you or books that you read. You're still not a product of yourself.
Like I keep saying, you are going to be formed by something. The only question is: what?
I think a lot of people are formed by the desire for something, like a nice standard of living, a fulfilling romantic relationship, or whatever. That's terribly destructive, because if your whole identity is tied to that thing, then the loss of it means the loss of your identity. You have a transitory, shifting form, because at any moment you may lose the thing you've built your whole life around. What kind of existence is that?
The sole thing you can reliably be formed by is God. The one variable that separates man from dirt at all, you remember, is God's breath. God is not dirt, which is why he's the only one qualified to sculpt the dirt - he's the only one who knows what it's supposed to look like. He knows what he had in mind when he breathed into dirt and raised up a man in the first place. And it stands to reason that, being God, he would understand more about dirt than we, his creations, do. He reminds us of this in Isaiah 55: "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." We look at dirt and we just see dirt. He looks at dirt and he thinks to himself, "A little bit of breath and this could be my beloved child." His ways are pretty far above ours.
Another thing about dirt is that some of it is really valuable. You can go to certain places in the world, and dig out shiny rocks that sell for a thousand dollars a carat. It's really kind of funny, because those shiny rocks aren't actually more valuable at all than the rest of the dirt; simply being shiny does not make a rock worth money. It's only valuable because someone wants it and is willing to part with a lot in order to get it. You could say the same about people. We, merely as humans, don't have any innate value whatsoever. The only value we have comes from the fact that God loves us and declares us valuable; while we were worth nothing at all, he sent Jesus to live a perfect life, die a horrific death, and be resurrected from the dead just so that we could be made right with God. Like dirt, we have no value, until Someone decides that he absolutely must have us, and pays a tremendous price to have us for himself.
Lastly, I want to point out that most people look at dirt and think, "It's just dirt." I don't have any shiny parts in me; there's nothing good or exceptional about me. And that might be true. But you can take a plain old lump of Texas red clay, put it in the hands of a master Sculptor, and he can churn out a masterpiece. Dirt doesn't have to have diamonds in it in order to be valuable. It just has to be in the hands of Someone who can take an ugly piece of mud and turn it beautiful.
All of this is what it means to be made out of dirt, but also what it means to be made out of God's breath. Something is going to form us, and that something is either going to be our empty pursuit of fragile dreams, or else the strong hands of a loving Sculptor. We can either spend our lives wondering whether we have value, or else trying to find our value in other things, or else resting easy in the knowledge that God has already declared us valuable and been willing to tear apart space and time, compress his deity into humanity, so that he could possess us for himself.
We're dirt, you and me. We were born from dirt, we spend a little while as men and women, and then our bodies go back to being dirt. What happens in the middle? What gets formed out of the dirt you've been given? Will you let yourself be formed by what happens to you, or will you leap into the hands of the Master?
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Wow! What a beautiful revelation! God has given you the gift of spiritual sight. Very enlightening!
I like this. Lots to think about. Thanks.
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