From the dust...

"Everything goes to the same place, everything comes from the dust, everything returns to the dust"
~ Ecclesiastes 3:20

This morning I am preparing to share in the service of a dear lady who passed away on Thanksgiving day.  While I met with her children yesterday, the stories of her life flowed and there were times when laughter filled the room, while sometimes, the room was very quiet.

We are the embodiment of the Divine meeting dust.  While I look at my hands, I try to imagine them no longer being instruments, and instead, left to return to that dust we have all been created from.

Our bodies are both fragile and so amazingly strong at the same time.  The ability to hold firm our spirit, while living out and working each day, tasks that provide for self and those around.

When I look at my hands I see the reflection of both my parents and grandparents, marked by years of use.  Places where I have had stitches, scarred by a few home improvement projects (no laughing), have provided comfort to those who have cried, and held both my own children and grandchildren.

I believe in the resurrection and sometimes I do think of what life in heaven will be like without this body made of dust. For some reason it's easier for me to imagine what heaven will be like than what I will be like in heaven

I have heard people joke and say that they hope that their body in heaven will mirror some starlet or sports figure, but we really don't know what our bodies will be like.

Paul sees our mortal bodies as the seeds for our resurrected bodies: "What you sow must die before it is given new life; and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but only a bare grain, of wheat I dare say, or some other kind; it is God who gives it the sort of body that he has chosen for it, and for each kind of seed its own kind of body" (1 Corinthians 15:36-38).

I have to believe that our presence in heaven will be as unique as we are in our bodies now. I hope that in that uniqueness, we will be given that which glorifies God.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2017