Out of the Dust

I just cleaned an embarrassing amount of dust out from under my bed. 

That's partly because I just never sweep under there. But also I'm convinced there's a dust/pollen/floating particle epidemic in Italy. Seriously. Stuff, in daunting sizes and quantities, drifts through the air and into your nose and eyes and throat and you sneeze and tear up and cough and it's just not fun.

I'm pretty sure nobody likes dust. It's dirty. It makes you sneeze. Having a layer of gray fluff on your furniture just isn't attractive. 

But as I was dumping those unseemly balls of dirt and debris into my trashcan, I couldn't get that Gungor song out of my head:

"You make beautiful things, 

you make beautiful things out of the dust.

You make beautiful things,

you make beautiful things out of us."

After all, God made man from the dust of the earth:

"Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." -Genesis 2:7

I've never really thought about how incredible it is that God took the lowliest, most mundane thing and transformed it into something as beautiful and complex as the human body. But God has a way of doing that…of taking the lowly things, "the least of these," and using them for his glory.

"God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption." -1 Corinthians 1:27-30

In the same way, He can take our dust, our dirt, our broken pieces, our ruins, and make them beautiful. He can change us and use us despite our deficiencies and just our absolute mess. "But we have this treasure in jays of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." (2 Corinthians 4:7)

Just as flowers bloom after the long grayness and lifelessness of winter, He has the power to create and resurrect. Spring feels hopeful in that way, doesn't it? Seeing new life in flowers and plants and birds and sunshine. The good news is that there IS hope for new life in the one who "swallowed up death in victory." (1 Corinthians 15:54, Isaiah 25:8). The One who, Himself, arose from the dead.

And now as I listen to the rain hitting the balcony outside my window, I think about how he can cleanse us from the old, from the dust.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come." -2 Corinthians 5:17

In case you haven't heard the Gungor song, Beautiful Things, give it a listen. This video is my favorite visual interpretation of it. I hope it gets stuck in your head too ;) "You make me new, You are making me new…"

"He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!'" -Revelation 21:5