Dust to Dust

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” Genesis 2:7a

The heavens and earth had barely been created before God tenderly bent down and got His hands dusty by forming man and creating life with His breath. Think about that for a minute…we could have been formed with any element that God thought up but He chose dust. I can’t think of a less exciting starting point for creation than the tiny particles that I am constantly trying to eliminate. Dust makes my eyes itch…dust makes me sneeze…dust hides the beauty of my furniture. Yet God chose it to create new out of old…people out of particles…'in His image' out of nothingness. Dust becomes paramount because God chose it to create something beautiful out of a million separate pieces.

God is the ultimate Potter and knows the importance of dust when making our lives beautiful when we have been shattered. Did you know that a wise potter uses the dust from a perfectly broken vessel to create new pottery? It turns out that the dust from a broken piece actually strengthens the new vessel when added to the fresh clay. This stronger clay can endure hotter fires and when glazed, these pieces have greater beauty because of the presence of dust.

God uses this process continually as He sees our brokenness when life leaves us shattered. He gently bends down and choses the perfect pieces of dust that surrounds us and incorporates it into our pain. He discards those elements that serve no benefit to our spirit and begins creating stronger faith and greater purpose from our suffering. We cannot be the same person we were before we were shattered for God is pressing us into a new creation using the beauty of our past and the contents of our pain.

‘A potsherd is a broken piece of pottery. A broken potsherd can lie on the ground and be nothing more than a constant reminder of brokenness. Or the Master Potter can be entrusted to take that broken potsherd, shatter it just right, and then use it in remolding us to make us stronger and even more beautiful.’ Seeing Beautiful Again, Lysa TerKeurst, p. 24-25.