"...then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." Genesis 2:8
There we were: a million little pieces of crushed rocks and roots. We were what mother's now make their son's and daughter's wash off before they eat lunch. We were messy, we were nothing, we had not yet taken form or breathed our first breath... we were dirt.
I don't know what made Him do it the way He did- the cosmos came from one word, the animals in similar fashion. And then there was us: man. We were made from particles already created, when He had gathered up the seas we were exposed. Soon we would tread upon the clay from whence we came, our newly fashioned feet, our gloriously beaming bodies. But first we had to be pieced together...from dust.
I see the Ageless eyes looking at a heaping mound of dirt. Twinkling. Ecstatic. He saw something there in that red, brown, rocky powder. He saw fingers and toes, muscles and bones, more than a frame- He saw potential. He saw image bearers, He saw glorious dreamers and risk takers, He saw a declaration to the rest of creation of His goodness and nature.
Yep, that was us...dirt.
Wait, what else was there tangled within this soon to be living thing? Ah, yes...sin. It wasn't present in the moment we know that, but it loomed not far ahead. He wasn't oblivious, He knew. He knew we would choose self one day. It looked like pleasure and fulfillment, it looked harmless and sweet... and it would take us out.
And He considered.
Undeterred by the shadow of death that He foreknew...He dug in. Tilling us up, spreading us out, fashioning, forming, molding. We laid there still- lifeless until He breathed into our deflated lungs. Our eyes opened, we were perfect, we were complete, we laid there and looked at Him and had no idea we would mess it up, and He didn't tell us, because that wasn't the point.
He made us because out of every part of Him oozed perfect Wisdom and perfect Love. He sees how He wants to see, and with that does what He wants to do.
He saw this powdery substance, treaded on by beasts, home to roots and leaves, undignified... and in His wild creativity and fiery love He gave dignity to the dirt. What has been walked upon, what has been taken for granted, dismissed, and forgotten- He dignified. What was messy and undefined He brought life to, and I am convinced that He has asked us...post dirt, to do the same.
While I cannot create something from nothing, and I have no ability to make humans from dust, I can see how He sees. I can give dignity to the undignified. They don't have to ask for it, I didn't... I was dirt, what did I know? But He gave it anyway, He pulled us up, brushed us off, breathed into our lungs, and called what was not as though it was.
I believe that I have been wrong in my views of humanity. In my own pain and experience of dirt, I have written people off. I have stereotyped. I have acted superior forgetting underneath my nails a distant home...dirt.
I want to join His perspective, I want to dignify the "dirt". I want eyes to see what doesn't clearly present itself in my neighbor; regardless of what lies behind or before them, I want to love. Those who are just plain different than me, the ones I have brushed aside and looked down on; because I am still broken and my eyes are dim... I want to love. I don't want to come from over them, I want to dig in, side-by-side, tilling and sowing dignity into lives that need to know they are worth it, that they are seen, and they are loved.
We may have made excuses for our closed off hearts and our hands in our pockets, not so quick to reach out; uncomfortable with those a little messy, those not like us, muddied by life and even their own decisions. But I'm asking Him to help me change: because from the dust, He saw man...and He made man in His own image.
