From Dust to Dust

“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” — Genesis 3:19

These are the ritual words of Ash Wednesday. Charred palm branches turned into ashes, spread across the forehead as a visual symbol of our mortality supplanted by Jesus’ resurrection.

You see, God says to Adam in Genesis three that he’s returning, mortally, to the dust from which he was created when God breathed life into his form because of his fruit-eating sin. Adam was supposed to grow from a divine dust cloud into an eternal being.

As my kid’s bible phrases it the Garden had “beauty, and order, and plenty.” Adam and Eve traded that for the false-hope of God-like knowledge, and in so doing gave up their forever-life in God’s presence for the chance to imitate God in their separation.

It was a bad deal then, and it’s a bad deal now.

The rest of the bible is about the quest to restore human unity with God’s presence in the here and now; the physical and the tangible world which we inhabit. That quest culminates on the crucifixion-cross where Jesus paves a footpath back to the Garden.

We can walk back into to communion with God, not just in a metaphysical sense, but in the beauty and order and plenty of God’s grace. Or as it’s phrased in John 10, “the abundant life.”

Because those palm branches burned into ashes aren’t just about our mortal bodies buried back into the ground. They’re about the inauguration of King Jesus.

Remember, the palms laid on the ground to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem were a sign of royalty and victory. They were a call back to Solomon’s temple, which had palm branches etched on the walls. They were a proper recognition of the in-breaking of God’s restored reality “on earth as it is in heaven,” even though those shouting “Hosanna!” didn’t fully understand the kind of King they were venerating.

Ash Wednesday is both the dust in the wind and the figure formed from the dirt.

It’s confronting our mortality and embracing God’s forever.

It’s living in the mystery and hope of eternity while fully inhabiting the present reality.

Ash Wednesday is what it means to be a Christian. A re-ordered existence around the presence of the divine.

The completion of the quest.

Restoration with God in the garden.

Again, here’s how my kid’s bible (beautifully written by Phil Vischer) says it,

And in the very end, we will see a new heaven and a new earth. Everything will be RESTORED. Reconciled. Cleaned of all evil. At last, the kingdom of God in full BLOOM!
And heaven and earth will be together. In his visions, John saw a new city where we will live with God. In the center of the city is the tree of life from the Garden of Eden, brining HEALING to all God’s friends.

The story that started with a garden ends with a GARDEN CITY. The city of God. Where there is no sickness, no tears, no bullies, and no death. A new Earth, cleaned of sin and evil, where we will live, work, eat, play, sing and dance with the God who made us and who loves us very much!

Don’t you want to come?

From dust to the dust-formed eternal image of God.