Eirene is Jed Chun's personal blog, hosted by Joy Is Found. It's a reflective blog that he started with the intention of finding joy and renewing his awe of God in his everyday life as well as the places and things that are around him. He explores a variety of topics in relation to faith such as food, mental health, travel and relationships.
Waikiki, Hawaii. Camera: Canon 6D Lens: Rokinon 14mm f/2.8
Dust. At the end of the day, that’s all we are - insignificant, minuscule, particles floating about in this grand universe. I’ve recently found myself reflecting on this word. Dust. Everyone experiences days when they feel insignificant. Days where all they worked for and struggled for disappears and becomes…dust. Days where we realize there are millions of people doing more amazing things than this mundane job that we sit at day after day. Days where we’re overcome by feelings of loss, grief, and sadness and we find ourselves face to face with our own mortality. Days where it seems everything feels rather pointless or even meaningless. Days where we just want to give up.
Recently, I had a conversation with a friend and, in the midst of my emotional and frustration fueled rant about life and my current situation, she asked the question, “Do you ever think about your own mortality?” I was a little perplexed, to say the least. It was not a question that I expected nor did I really felt like answering at the time so I brushed it off but the question stayed in my mind for the rest of the day. Mortality. Dust. It appeared that I’d found my way to the opposite end of the spectrum of faith again, wallowing in my own self-pity and feeling like it wasn’t worth trying any more. Eventually I found myself thinking that we would all die someday and that going to heaven sounded like a great deal to me so I wouldn’t mind it coming sooner. I thought I could just give up on everything and binge k-dramas until the time comes right?
Maybe.
Yet, despite my stubbornness and escapist mentality, God has this uncanny ability where he refuses to let me continue to wallow in the muck that is self-pity (although next time hopefully it’ll happen sooner rather than later *glares up at the sky,* though to be fair it is kind of my fault).
Earlier this week, I had the amazing opportunity to experience one of those days I talked about earlier – “Days where all that I worked for and struggled for disappeared…” Yea, that one. Long story short, a project that I was working on for months blew up in my face (not literally). After a 48 hour long emotional roller-coaster ride, I found myself face down in my pillow and I couldn’t get the phrase “from dust to dust” out of my head. So, like any reasonably distraught Christian, I decided to Google “dust to dust sermon” and, in my endless curiosity, 4 results down from the top, I found myself skimming through a sermon until I something caught my attention:
I Corinthians 15:42-49 (NRSV)
42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
“This passage challenges our imaginations of the future. It asserts what we know – that all people, from the very beginning, have been mortal, from the dust. We live in these dying bodies of ours. But then Paul says there is more to come, that we have not seen. Our bodies are destined for greatness. Like Jesus, a resurrected body is in our future, beyond the grave. I find this challenging, and a space of regular doubt given we haven’t seen it yet, and because we know so much loss and death. We know what corpses and ashes look like. We know the biology and the physics of death. And yet Paul insists that as history has seen with a risen Jesus, so the future will see with us. God knows the biology and the physics of new life and resurrected bodies.... In my work as a pastor with dead and dying, I have seen suffering and frailty and despair. But as much as I have seen these things, I have seen the miraculous and ethereal dignity and beauty of the human spirit. I have heard stories of unexpected amends made as people face death. I have listened to the bone-deep faith and assurance of the dying that this is not the end of them. I have seen transcendent peace on the faces of the suffering and emaciated. We sing a song here now and then where we say to our Maker, “You make beautiful things out of dust. You make beautiful things out of us.” The dust from which we’re made has coalesced into bodies that somehow find room for beauty, aspiration, hope, joy, and love, even in the bleakest times and places. As we hear in Jurassic Park: Life finds a way. From dust we come, to dust we will return. But what dust we are now. And as to what we are becoming – who’s to say it won’t be even more stunning than what we have yet seen and known?” – Steve Watson
Those lyrics really hit home for me. “Beautiful things out of dust.” How often I forget that despite all of our perceived shortcomings and imperfections, insignificance, and ephemerality, that we have purpose and have been given worth by God. Perhaps there is still something beautiful yet to be made of this life that I’m living.
Despite physically being in Sunday service these last few weeks; my mind has been elsewhere. I’ve been catching bits and pieces of the sermon series and just floating my way through service, but something threw me off this last week. We’ve been reciting the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) for the last few years, but this last week the verse changed.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 1 Peter 2:9 (ESV)
Reflecting on it now, it feels like a rather appropriate change, particularly for where I’m at now – despite being dust, I’ve been called into a marvelous light. Here’s to hoping that my life will start to reflect that again.