On Remembering We Are Dust

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. – Psalm 103:13-14

Three months ago, the summer stretched in front of me, weeks and weeks with no fixed schedule where I could devote myself to everything I wanted to get done. I planned to learn German read both fiction and nonfiction, whip my mom’s garden into shape, reconnect with old friends, write a large part of a novel, compose several blog, practice my flute regularly and shop for a house. I wish I was exaggerating. Classes start tomorrow, and not all of that got done. Not even close. My summer is just like life in general: so much to do, so little time.

If someone walked up to you and said, “You are dust,” you’d probably be very confused and a little offended. If they explained that in the Bible, comparing people to dust is a way of emphasizing mortality, you’d be less confused, but probably still offended. Our culture does everything it can to forget about death. We encourage our kids to reach for the stars and promise that if they work hard they can be anything they want to be. We spend hours exercising and go on all kinds of diets so that we look young and attractive. Even our meat comes in pristine shrink-wrapped packages with all the icky organs removed, so it doesn’t remind us of the animals it came from.

It’s tempting to think that reminding people of their mortality – or any limit – is unkind. People want to be encouraged, to have people build up their self-esteem. But actually, recognizing our limitations is far kinder than denying them.

Psalm 103 associates God’s compassion for humanity with His remembering that they are dust. Often, we are least compassionate when we forget human limits. It’s easy to get impatient when you think someone should be able to do something for you, but they don’t. And if you’re in a position of authority, expecting people to do more than they’re capable of can make their lives miserable. New professors, for example, are infamous for giving unreasonable amounts of work because they don’t know what students can handle.

The same goes for my attitude toward myself. Too often, I forget that I am dust. When I think about everything I tried and failed to do this summer, frustration and discouragement threaten to overwhelm me. There are so many good things to do, and one lifetime is far too short to get them done. But I don’t have to do everything. I am dust, and creatures of dust need time to rest. And God knows I am dust. He will not be disappointed that I can’t do everything. He knows my weakness and has compassion. Paradoxically, God extends compassion and mercy precisely because He knows we are dust. He loves us not because we can do so much but because we need His love so desperately.

Friend, when (not if) people fall short of your expectations, remember that they are dust. And when (not if) you disappoint yourself, remember that you are dust. And rejoice that God also remembers we are dust, forgives our sins and comforts us in our weaknesses.

Grace in the Law

The distinction between law and grace has been part of Christianity practically since it first began. The heart of the gospel is that it is God’s grace, and not the Law, that saves us. We can’t establish a right relationship with God by keeping His commands because none of us keeps those commands perfectly. So God chose to act, becoming human in the person of Jesus and dying for us so that our sins could be forgiven and we could become children of God.

Some Christians have an unfortunate tendency to associate the Law that cannot save us with the Old Testament and grace with the New Testament. This makes the Old Testament little more than an obsolete relic of an age without grace when people struggled to be obedient enough to save themselves, proof of the problem Christ came to solve. Or it becomes a collection of inspiring stories about heroes who can serve as models for faith and good behavior. Now, the Old Testament does show us humanity’s desperate need, and it does give us role models and moral instruction, but it’s more than that. It’s the oldest record we have of God’s grace.

Yes, I said the Old Testament records grace. And to illustrate this I’m going to turn to Exodus20, the chapter that contains the Ten Commandments. This chapter is one of the clearest, most concise statements of God’s law. But notice the first thing God says in it: “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex 20:2). Before God commands the Israelites to do anything, He points out what He has already done. The Exodus was the defining event of Israel’s history. It made Israel a nation, brought liberty to its people and demonstrated dramatically that God had chosen them and was willing and able to overcome anything that opposed them. It was the moment that fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham, when He swore to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation. And God did all this when Israel was helpless. They had done nothing to deserve God’s favor, nothing to merit being rescued. The Exodus was pure grace.

And so, God begins the Law with a reminder of grace. It is because the LORD is their God and has established a unique relationship with them through the Exodus, that they are to worship no other gods, to refrain from making idols, to respect God’s name and so on. Even the laws relating to relationships with other people reflect the fact that these are people made in God’s image, so the way they relate to each other reveals their attitude toward God.

The Law is rooted and grounded in grace. Even at the beginning, when God first revealed it to Israel, He began by pointing out the grace they had already received. And so it is with us. The New Testament has much to say about how we ought to live, and the moral laws within the Old Testament are still binding on Christians (though ceremonial laws and stipulations about Israel’s government are not). If we have truly received God’s grace, we must obey God’s law, and if we appreciate God’s grace we will want to. But we must never let law become prior to grace. As with Israel, so with us: God saves first, and obedience is a response to that.

The Darkness Before Easter Dawn

In the hours before dawn, the women rose, gathered their spices and went to anoint Jesus’body. He was their friend, their teacher, and in one case, their son. The one person who knew their hearts completely and loved them still. The person who had given them hope that God had seen the misery of His people and was going to help them. The person who had healed sickness and cast out demons and even raised the dead. But now he was the one who was dead.

They had watched him take every agonizing step up Golgotha. They had seen the pain on his face and seen those long nails sticking out of his wrists. They had stared, unable to tear their eyes away but wishing they could. They had wept and wondered why God would allow this injustice and why the best man they had ever known would have to suffer so, and why they would have to lose him.

But by Sunday morning, their tears were spent. They must have found some way to numb the sorrow, to block it up in the bottoms of their hearts and roll a stone over the entrance. They busied themselves with preparing to anoint the body and with worrying about the stone at the entrance to the tomb, because the alternative was just too painful.

We, too, feel pain that is the same in kind if not in degree. We lose those we love. We watch friends get hurt. We see the injustice of the world and mourn for victims of senseless violence. We feel hope, only to have it crushed. Some of us wonder if there is anything left to live for.

But power is at work in the hour before Easter dawn. Even as the women trudge along the dark, stony path to the tomb, angels descend, and the stone is rolled away. Air fills the lungs collapsed by crucifixion, the hands pierced by nails move, His eyes open, and the soul of the man who spoke and laughed and cried and loved returns to His body. He is risen.

And those three words breathe life into souls that were nearly destroyed by sorrow. The injustice is righted, the loss is restored, the pain is healed. Hope is not only rekindled, but it blazes forth as brightly as the sun that now rises above the eastern horizon. He is alive, not only in our hearts but in reality. And because He lives, we also will live.

It’s now the day after Easter. The songs are sung, the decorations are coming down, and the chocolate is, or soon will be, consumed. It’s Monday, and people are going back into the drudgery of work. Life presses in with its various problems: sick children, quarrels with loved ones, disasters on the news, and pain hidden in our hearts.

But the Resurrection is not just a story. It is a historical event in which the raw, physical reality of death was reversed. Jesus had – and still has – a body just like yours but now transformed. He experienced all the struggles of your life and more. But He has overcome all that evil, and someday, He will return to destroy evil forever.

Friends, Christ is risen today and every other day. Remember that next time you feel the darkness pressing in on you. Jesus is alive.

Matthew

He sits beside the dusty road.

His face, his soul are caked with dust.

He slumps beneath guilt’s heavy load.

The glaring eyes, the jaws outthrust,

the scornful stares no longer burn;

accustomed to his people’s hate,

he dares not hope enough to yearn,

too dead to mourn his dying state.

Across his view some children run,

Leaping, laughing with delight.

Heads turn, and down the road there comes

a man with eyes alive with light

who smiles as the children play.

His footsteps trace a joyful dance.

The tax-collector looks away

and wishes for another chance.

He hears the dancing steps draw near.

He does not dare to raise his eyes.

He feels the weight of shame and fear,

but deep beneath the surface lies

a thirst for life, for love, for good,

for someone to call him to be

more. If only someone would.

The Teacher says, “Come, follow me.”

One Does Not Simply Walk Into Heaven

Yesterday morning I saw a news report about former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, which quoted him as saying, “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven.”

I think this is a pretty clear expression of most Americans’ thoughts about heaven. It’s not based on any particular religion (Bloomberg doesn’t even sound sure that God exists). But there’s a general sense that God is nice and will let people into heaven because they volunteered or donated money or did political work meant to help people or just were a nice person.

I wish it were that simple, but it’s not. One does not simply walk into heaven. To do that you would need to be perfect, and we aren’t. And if God simply overlooked the things we did wrong, it would violate His justice and make heaven less perfect in the process.

I can relate to the thought process that Bloomberg used. I thought more or less the same way when I was younger. At the time, I wasn’t really focused on getting to heaven. But I desperately wanted to know that God was pleased with me, and I thought that was something I can earn.

Do you think God is pleased with you? Maybe you’re certain that you’ve done enough good things to make God happy. Or maybe you’re thinking, “No, God isn’t pleased with me.” Maybe you’ve done something terrible in the past and you just can’t forget it. Or maybe you haven’t done anything really bad, but you know you’re not good enough. I fell into that last category.

I was always a “good girl.” I didn’t do drugs or steal or do anything that’s usually considered really bad. But I knew I didn’t measure up to what God wanted.

I sometimes argued with my brother or my parents. Occasionally I lied to teachers about whether I’d done my homework. I grew up going to church, so I knew God wanted me to be loving and friendly. But I was really shy, so I avoided my classmates instead.

These may seem like little things, but I felt terrible about them. They showed that inside, I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. At church, I kept committing to follow God, and I kept falling short. I was convinced that God was disappointed in me because I was disappointed in myself. I also wasn’t sure I had really been forgiven because I knew that receiving God’s forgiveness should change my life, and my life wasn’t changing.

Finally, when I was 14, I went to a church camp. They told me the news I had heard so many times before: That Jesus had died for me and taken the punishment I deserved for my sins. He rose from the dead and now offered me forgiveness. I just had to receive it.

I prayed and told God that I couldn’t live a good life on my own. As good as I might have looked on the outside, I was really messed up inside. I asked Him to forgive and change me.

That was when I finally realized that God doesn’t save us because of good things we’ve done or because He knows we’ll do good things in the future. He saves us just because He loves us.

After I asked God to change me, He did. I began to want to pray and read the Bible. I became more patient and loving, and I gradually stopped being so shy. But the best thing is knowing that God is pleased with me. And I can be sure that when I die I can simply walk into heaven. But it’s not because I’ve earned it. It’s because Jesus earned it for me. 

Myths About Work Part 5: Work Defines Our Relationship With God

This is the final post in my series on myths about work. If you’re interested, here are part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4. For this post, I’d like to broaden my focus a bit to include not only the work we are paid to do but also other things we feel we must accomplish. That includes things like housework, serving at church or volunteering. Many people buy into the myth that these actions define our relationship with God.

In the Babylonian myth that I’ve been comparing to the Christian story, the gods created people to do work for them. Since the work was assigned by the gods, we can infer that their attitude toward you would depend on how well you work. In Babylonian religious life, this worked out as sacrifices. People would give sacrifices as food to the gods. In return for these gifts, they would bless their worshipers (theoretically, at least).

Here in Taiwan, I often see people burning incense or paper money or leaving out food for gods, ghosts or their ancestors. But even in the religions that no longer require these kinds of sacrifices, one’s relationship to God (or the gods) is often dependent on obeying a set of commands or moral principles.

Even in churches, this myth is prevalent. I accepted it for much of my childhood. Sunday School lessons tended to focus on what God wanted us to do and examples of heroes to follow. Or at least, that’s how I understood it at the time. When I got into junior high school, the gospel message was proclaimed a bit more often, but it still took an awfully long time for me to get the point.

Throughout junior high school I felt incredibly guilty because I couldn’t bring myself to do what God required of me. Most notably, I knew I should reach out and share the gospel with people, but I was painfully shy and couldn’t work up the courage to do so. Finally, I gave up. I told God, “I can’t do this. If You want me to be a good person, You have to change me.”

Little did I know that that was exactly what God wanted. I admitted that I couldn’t earn His love, but I turned to Him in faith, believing that He could and would accept me anyway.

When we look at the Genesis creation story, God did ask Adam to tend and keep the garden He had made. But it was already a beautiful place filled with fruit trees. God showered Adam with blessings even before Adam had had a chance to do anything. In other words, the Biblical creation story starts with a free gift.

And although the Israelites and the Babylonians both performed sacrifices, their purposes were very different. The Babylonians sacrificed in return for favors to provide the gods with food. (Don’t want the immortals to starve to death.)

In contrast, the Israelite sacrifices were given either to atone for sin or to express gratitude. God was very clear that He didn’t need sacrifices. He didn’t even want them as much as He wanted His people to obey Him. But the real meaning of the sacrifices became clear thousands of years later. They were a picture of Jesus, who died on the cross to bring people forgiveness for their sins.

It is this gift, the sacrifice of Christ, that allows us to have a good relationship with God. Not sacrifices we give God. Not even our own obedience. Only a gift of grace.

The Biblical view of work is complex and multifaceted. We’ve seen how it is a good thing that reflects the image of God in us. But it is neither our purpose nor the thing that determines our value. We work, not primarily because God told us to, but because God works, and we were born to be like Him. God’s work is the foundation for our work. And it, not our own effort, is the foundation of our relationship with Him.

The Song

Echoing out of the expanse of eternity is a song.

It flows in flawless three-part harmony from one Singer’s voice, vast and vibrant.

Its chords resound with such magnificence that the universe springs into being solely for the purpose of resonating with it.

Its harmony rings out in the treble tweeting of birds, the staccato rhythm of rain, the baritone bellow of the elephant, the tender lullaby of a mother.

But humanity in its vanity chooses not to sing along.

In our insanity we demand the right to compose solos for ourselves, rather than letting our voices meld into the overpowering orchestra.

We plug our ears with distractions – toys, wealth, pleasure, fame, flattery

We bang on everything we can touch, hoping to drown out the song, striking wildly at others and ourselves.

We create a cacophony so we don’t have to listen, then loudly conclude that since we can’t hear the Song, it must be a myth manufactured to silence our voices.

Its vaulting melodies are replaced with the grinding of machinery, inane chatter, whispers of gossip, voices raised in quarreling, the crack of whips, the thumping of soldiers’ steps, the sobbing of frightened children silenced by a gunshot.

Yet the song plays on.

The Singer’s voice will not be silenced, though it may sound soft and slow, sadden by our suffering.

The chords continue, constantly calling us to stop.

To listen.

To rejoin the chorus.

The song longs to seep into our tone-deaf souls, giving us new ears, hearts and voices.

The music will not stop until all discord resolves in radiant harmony.

For the Singer is also a Composer, and He planned a flawless finale before the first note was sung.

Famous First Words

I love hearing stories about the beginnings of relationships. I especially like stories about how people met their spouses. Sometimes, they don't seem particularly special or romantic at the time. For example, a woman who used to work at my current company met her husband at an ESL Bible study. She was his teacher, and the first thing she ever said to him was, “You’re late!”

Stories like this just show how little we know about the future. So often we meet people who will have a huge effect on our lives, but we have no way of knowing it at the time.

But of course, relationships involving God are completely different. He knew everything that would happen in the history of the human race, which makes the first things He said to people especially interesting.

The first thing in the Bible that God said to a human is a blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28). There’s a lot that could be said about this verse, but I want to focus on the kind of relationship it suggests. When God created people, He wanted them to experience an abundant, fruitful, successful life, which would involve enjoying and taking care of everything in the world.

The next thing he said was, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food” (Genesis 1:29). Again, this is God blessing people, giving them an abundance of delicious food and allowing them to enjoy creation. Although the Bible does not mention this specifically, I’d like to point out that this includes chocolate – truly proof that God had our best interests at heart!

The creation account in Genesis 2 focuses more specifically on God’s creation of human beings, and the first recorded words in this account are very similar: “You may surely eat of every tree in the garden …” (Genesis 2:16). Yes, God goes on to give one exception to this sweeping statement, but the main point is still that Adam has an abundance of food – food he didn’t work to grow, because it was right there.

To me, this is a reminder of how central grace is in God’s relationship with us. We Christians tend to think of grace in terms of God’s forgiveness for sin. But any gift that we do not deserve or earn is also grace. Here, God gives grace by blessing people and showering them with gifts before the people have done anything at all.

So unlike the stories of human relationships, the story of God’s relationship with humanity is the same from beginning to end. God has always related to people on the basis of grace, giving generously long before people start serving Him. And God’s grace will continue to be the source of all our blessings even into eternity. In the words of John Newton, “’Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

The Riches of His Glorious Inheritance

Ephesians 1:18-19

… having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to his great might …

Reading through this passage today, I was struck for the first time by the phrase “his glorious inheritance in the saints.” Before, when I read this verse, I had always associated it with another nearby verse that says that the Holy Spirit is “the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” After all, they both use the word “inheritance.”

The other verse, Ephesians 1:14, is referring to what God has promised those who have become His children in Christ. This includes righteousness, a face-to-face relationship with God, and a position in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We get these in part today through the Holy Spirit (our “guarantee”), but we will not fully “acquire possession of it” until Christ’s second coming.

But then I realized that that isn’t what Ephesians 1:18 is talking about. The idea in verse 14 could be called “the saints’ glorious inheritance in Christ,” but verse 18 is about Christ’s glorious inheritance in the saints.

What does THAT mean? Christ is God and has complete control of everything in the universe. Furthermore, our salvation was completely from God’s grace, not because of anything we give God, as the rest of Ephesians 1 (and the rest of Scripture) makes clear.

I think it means that Christ’s “glorious inheritance” IS the saints. Just as Israel was “a people of [God’s] own inheritance,” the saints, God’s people under the New Covenant, belong to Christ. Note that “saints” when used in the New Testament means all those who believe in Jesus. For proof, you can look at Ephesians 1:1, where the letter is addressed to “the saints who are in Ephesus,” meaning the whole church.

This is absolutely stunning. It means that WE are Christ’s glorious inheritance. God sees us as glorious. And the text doesn’t treat this as some curious opinion God has. It doesn’t say, “the inheritance God thinks is glorious.” No, it says “glorious inheritance,” like the thing in question is objectively glorious. And Paul is praying that the Christians he writes to may know “the riches of His glorious inheritance.” He wants them to recognize that they, as Christ’s possession, have become glorious.

What is glorious about us? I think the phrases on either side of this one answer that question. First, there is “the hope to which he has called you” – God’s reliable promise to bring us into His glory. God chose us to “be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1: 4), and when God decides to do something, it is as good as done.

The other thing that makes us glorious is “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.” God’s power has already started working miracles in our lives. He has raised us from death in our sins to life. And just as Christ was raised from death up to heaven where he is now seated at the father’s right hand, God will continue to raise up until we too are given heavenly authority.

Part of me wants to stop and qualify this saying, “of course, we’re not there yet. Christians do terrible things, just like everyone else, and in many ways we are far from glorious." This is true. But what God is making us is far more fundamental to who we are than anything we do. Christ may not have fully come into His inheritance yet – that is, He may not yet have complete control of our lives. But that doesn’t change the fact that our core identity has altered – we ARE Christ’s glorious inheritance.