by Dora Van Assen
While we were living in the Mojave Desert of Arizona as missionaries to the American Indians I really came to the point where I hated dust. It could be so hot, 121 degrees in the shade. To make it even worse a dust storm would arrive, blowing the fine dust of the sand dunes through every crack and crevice of the old wood-framed house in which we lived. Under every window sill and door, through the screened porch, sweeping into every room. Then an electricial storm would pass thru the sky bringing just enough rain to turn the dust into mud.
What a mess to clean up! And yet I loved our ministry among the Indians. As we grew to know them, we learned to love and respect them for their courage and ability to survive in such a desolate place. They taught us so many things we could not have learned any other way. One has to live with them in order to know them - beautiful saints of God. They learned to survive in a hot and barren land, and in surviving to love it, and I must say, looking back to that time in my life, I learned to love it too. Love grown through sacrifice.
To me in all my travels around the world, when the desert was in bloom, which I had the privilege to see, was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen in my life. It lasted only about a week but during this short period of time, thousands of people came to see it. Driving hundreds of miles to this hot, barren land knowing these flowers bloom only when it rains at the right season. A miracle! For miles the desert was turned into a carpet of many-colored flowers, so beautiful and delicate, some only about one half inch high covering the fine desert sand dunes.
What amazed us so much - these tiny seeds lay dormant in the hot dry dust for years, waiting for the the rain in the right season. We lived there seven years before it happened, and we never saw it again during the nineteen years we were among the Indians. I thank God for allowing us to see it!
It taught me that the incorruptible seed of the Christ can lay dormant in our earth dust-form for thousands of years and still spring up and bloom as a rose.
DUST IS BEAUTIFUL
About two years ago I read an article in the Reader's Digest called: "The Kingdom of Dust". In this article I began to see the important place dust has in our daily life. It made me see that even though we are clothed in dust, we are beautiful to God who sees us in our true colors. God sees all creation in Christ, or under the blood as we used to say it - meaning Christ died for all and He now lives in all and all live in Him.
Without the fine dust floating in the air we would not be able to see a sunbeam. A sunbeam is formed by the sunlight shining through a window pane on the fine dust floating in the room. What a delight it was as a child to run my fingers in this light causing a stream of dust to flow from each finger.
Dust was not problem to me then. The unending chore of dusting and even scrubbing the dirt out of the cracks soon caused me to forget the joy of playing in the mud as a child.
In God's plan, dust plays an important role in the natural realm. It brings a lot of beauty for us to see in the world around us. Without dust we would not see the many shades of green grass and foilage, or multi-colored flowers. There would be no blue skies with fleecy white clouds. No haze over the mountains and valleys, making different shadows; and no breath-taking sunrise or sunset, which we so enjoyed in the hot Arizona desert.
This article made me cry! I could hardly beliveve what I was reading. The beauty so graciously given to us through dust so fine, it is invisible to the natural eye. Just think, God made us out of this "highest dust". Prov. 8:26. How wonderful to know that our dust bodies radiate the beauty of God's divine thoughts. "We are fearfully and wonderfully made and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." Psa. 139:13-16
Dust also gives us many practical things. One of them is rain. To form clouds, rising vapor needs the dust suspended in the air around which it collects to form clouds full of rain; like a pearl is formed around a grain of sand in the oyster. Without the fine dust being moved by the air currents, the million tons of pollen would not be carried all over the US, pollenating the flowers and trees.
An average 43 tons of dust falls on us each year. Where does it all come from? We make tons of it ourselves. In our factories, in our daily work on the job and at home. Minute flakes are rubbed off this paper as I write. We gather about forty pounds a year in our home. Some dust is so fine it goes through the vacum cleaner bag into the motor causing friction and we get that hot smell. Another place it comes from is the ocean. More salt is blown inland from the sea than the total mined by men - 300 million tons per year. All this carried by the wind.
Jesus said, "Ye are the salt of the earth!" Each one of us scattered like salt to be the preserving power in the place where we are called! God knows the time and the boundaries of our habitation on the earth and the purpose we are to fulfull in His great plan of redemption of all men. Act. 17:26
DUST SEEMS TO BE ALIVE
Millions of dust mites so small that at least twelve could sit on the head of a pin, live in our beds and rugs. They consume the millions of invisible skin particles we shed from our bodies each day of our lives. Their waste creates the strongest allergies that plague humanity. Yet we need them for the yeast produced by these tiny spores; mites are the chemists of this Kingdom of Dust. Too much bacteria in our bodies is harmful, yet we need the right amount to keep this natural body alive. So dust mites actually keep the balance in nature. And man formed in dust has been given the dominion to keep this balance in God's Kingdom of Dust.
Another amazing thing about dust is its ability to travel all over the world. From the highest realms that telescopes have probed, scientists have seen dust floating in the air throughout space. The surface of the earth has been moved around from the beginning of time. The finest dust grains are airborn for centuries, the wind blowing it from place to place. As you are wiping the dust on your living room furniture, you may be picking up some dust from the moon! Or the ordinary dust in your back yard may have some specks from Halley's Comet that just passed through our hemisphere recently. Even Adam's dust is still here somewhere, nothing is annihilated!
What I am trying to convey is that all the dust from the beginning of time is still on this planet or universe somewhere. It is either in the ground or floating in the atmosphere. All the dust bodies of our ancestors from Adam to our day are still here in specks of dust somewhere. They may be mixed in the dust of our own living bodies right now. As one generation of natural man passes away, another one arises to take its place. Ecc. 1:4
"DUST THOU ART AND TO DUST SHALT THOU RETURN"
Just reading this statement as it stands alone, it seems a very hard sentence for such a small act of disobedience. It seems to make God hard and cruel. In my meditation on this text, and the context surrounding this verse, I began to see that this sentence of death was really for Adam's good! It gave him hope for a better life. God never cursed Adam! - only the ground from which his body was formed. Read Gen. 3:17. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake!" Adam himself was never destroyed. The Lord breathed into his nostrils or his earthen body formed out of dust, the Breath of Life. This vital principle of Life is the Spirit of God and can never die or be annihilated. It lives and moves in all creation, sustaining and controlling all things. The breath of God is the Spirit of God in all men - the candle of the lord, making up his Inner Man, the treasure hidden in an earthen vessel. The vessel will be swallowed up by The Treasure, metamorphosed into a glorious form of life.
God actually blessed Adam by giving him work to do as he developed from glory to glory. Work seems a curse to us, but just try to do absolutely nothing for a while. It will drive you crazy. God gives us this beautiful body with the ability to use our minds to create useful things, and delightful things, to see and smell and hear and taste and feel. He gave us a body to bring into manifestation the thoughts and ideas of our mind for all to see and enjoy. And what joy our children brings us. Who really cares about the pain and work they bring with them!! What delight we have seeing them grow - how proud we are of them. Don't you think God enjoys His children? I know He does. Acts 17:28, Rev. 4:11. God is happy in His creation of man in every stage of their development as they progress into His exact image. God sees Himself in man. "God manifested in flesh" 1 tim. 3:16
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