King of the Dirt Clods

When I was a boy, a large part of my summers was spent outside.  Considering back then we didn’t have video games, internet, or cable television, there wasn’t much to do inside anyway.  So my friends and I spent many hot humid Mississippi days riding our bikes, climbing trees, and squaring off in dirt clod fights.  In our epic battles, we would first locate our fortifications - trees, ditches, and old buildings - then spend countless hours bombarding each other with balls of dirt and sometimes rocks, sticks, and even cow manure (because our fights were normally in or near cow pastures where "meadow muffins" were ubiquitous).  It was great fun, unless you got hit in the head, especially the face.

In Psalm 103:14, it says God “knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.”  There are several things we could note from this passage, but what I want to focus on is the phrase “we are dust.”  This verse is teaching that physical humanity is nothing more than animated dirt.  Our bodies are dust particles stuck together in moving clods.  Maybe this is part of what King David had in mind when he asked the Lord in Psalm 8:4, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?”  What could be a greater condescension than the Lord of glory to think upon dust?

So if we are in fact dust, how senseless is it to be always comparing ourselves with and desiring to be better than other dust?  It may seem important now, but in the end, all our fretting and striving to be the king of the dirt clods is simply a waste of time.  As King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 2:11, “I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”  And again in Mark 8:36, “For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?”  Instead of wasting our lives pursuing the throne of the dirt clods, let us pursue Him who alone is worthy to be pursued, the crucified Lamb of God.

P.S.  I assume some could be offended at being called dust or animated dirt clods.  Ironically, many of these same people would have no problem saying they are evolved from tiny brainless amoebas.  How they could think one is much better than the other is beyond me.

P.P.S.  Despite the emphasis of this blog entry, Scripture teaches that humans are not mere physical bodies.  At minimum, human life is a dichotomy.  That is, men possess a material existence (their bodies), but they also have an immaterial existence (their souls).  Genesis 2:7 reads, “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  And it is with this immaterial soul that men pursue God, because “God is a Spirit’ (John 4:24) who “dwelleth not in temples made with hands” (Acts 17:24).