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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Dust: To add fine particles, or to remove them (11/13/25)
Once, I heard a preacher say, “There’s a level to which dust cannot rise”. He was wise and caring, and a Bible preaching man. I always believed his words.

I have to admit though, I thought I’d never found it. That level, I mean. The one I’d never have to clean.

I’ve cleaned my home faithfully, diligently (if not as often as I should) for years and one thing I know I can count on. There will be dust on every surface. For that reason, I’ve come to really appreciate clam shell molding and smooth, modern lines. Flat surfaces are a blessing.

Oh, I love gingerbread trim and claw-footed furnishings. Ornate decorations are soooo interesting and beautiful – as long as somebody else is keeping them clean. Dust loves all those grooves and crevices too, and it seems to take delight, feigning innocence, nonchalantly drifting down until it lands in those grooves and crevices and then it invites its friends to land there too. On its way down it has the audacity to make itself visible, even to glitter on golden rays of sunshine, ‘groovin’ on down, like it belongs there. I’m guessing it has risen to its capacity, hit the ceiling of the level it can’t rise above, and is returning to earth! How thoughtful!

And just where is that level it cannot rise above?

Dust is such an annoyance! It plagues me. It’s ugly and it’s unhealthy. Isn’t that why we have eyelashes? Isn’t that also why we have those wonderfully attractive hairs in our noses?

Dust, dust, dust! It’s all I can think about. It’s lodged in the corners of public places (like restrooms) where no one has the time or strong stomach to clean it away. It lands on our cars as we are held up in traffic in construction zones, or in our own driveways when we’re parked next to a dry lawn that is being mowed. My hands are ever-busy dusting it away from its known places and finding its new hideouts. My mind is consumed.

Sometimes it’s all I’m thinking about.

How small, how sad.

Maybe, just maybe, the worst danger dust is threatening me with is obsession. Maybe there’s some kind of subtle trick going on here – distracting me, making me busier than I need to be. It’s keeping me focused on something unimportant in the scheme of things. (In this moment feel my mind growing ‘three times bigger’ than it has previously been, just as Dr. Seuss’s Grinch’s heart grows!)

Dust, after all, is easily ‘dusted’ away. Will it come back? Always. Isn’t it a perpetual byproduct of the natural recycling process? As a result, will we ever get rid of it?

No.

But I remind myself, we do have eyebrows and nose hairs, even cilia in our lungs.

I realize that I’ve had a perspective problem. I’ve been looking down, not up. Scripture has something to say about that.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord (Psalm 121:1-2, KJV). Scripture does not ask, “From whence cometh my dust?”

I may have been formed from dust, but I wasn’t doomed to grovel in the dust. (I believe that job has been given to another.)

There are bigger and better things. I could concentrate instead on the needs of those around me and not so much on perpetually cleaning dust’s landing strips. Maybe I should be dusting a cake with the sweet sugar of love and sharing it – entertaining family, friends, strangers, even angels (they may be one and the same). There is so much kindness to be done.

And there, in that elevated place where love and kindness live, I realize I have found it. The preacher was right. There is a level to which dust cannot rise.
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This article has been read 160 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
Bonnie Bowden 
11/21/25
Being a Mary in our world is needed.
Loni Bowden-Horn 
11/25/25
And there, in that elevated place where love and kindness live, I realize I have found it. The preacher was right. There is a level to which dust cannot rise

I really like how the ending ties your opening about there is a level that dust cannot rise.
Helen H-S
12/03/25
Loved your humorous personification of dust! And even more I appreciate you lifting our gaze up to the Lord and in His Presence we live with love and kindness free from plague of dust!