Now that we have a carport for the first time in 27 years, I find myself wondering if all we did was get something else to keep clean. I know I sweep it every morning I am home and the weather is cooperative. If I miss a day, it’s really a mess. A little while ago, after a couple of rainy days, I had an especially large job ahead of me. In places on the edges the dust was caked an inch thick.
I thought I would never finish. I swept several times in each patch and still the dust flew. Finally I looked at Chloe and muttered, “There is enough dust here for God to make a whole person.” As my mind is apt to wander into strange places, it was only a second or two before I wondered if I was sweeping some Native American from four or five hundred years ago, or perhaps some Spanish conquistador who never made it home.
Now that’s a humbling thought, isn’t it? Some day several hundred years from now, someone may be sweeping me off their carport, or whatever they have by then.
When it comes right down to it that is all these bodies are. As God told Adam, For dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return, Gen 3:19. Too many times we think we are more than that. But answer this: how many billions (or trillions?) have ever lived in all of time, and how many of those do you find in your child’s history book? I imagine the percentage would be point zero, zero, zero, zero something, or even less. How can I ever think that I am so important to the world that I would wind up in that tiny group? I will be surprised if anyone remembers me even twenty years after I am gone, much less several hundred.
Thinking too well of myself will do nothing but cause serious trouble. How many relationships are ruined by self-centeredness? How many tyrants came out of an ego that could not be satisfied? How often has the Lord’s body suffered schisms because someone thought he was more important than any of his brethren?
If you think about it, it is ironic that the only person who was ever as humble as he should have been is the one who changed history forever. While we claim to follow Him, we evidently don’t believe His way is the best. Humility seems to be the most difficult thing we have to learn, and the place we most often fail.
So go sweep your carport today. It might be that you will gain a little perspective.
For if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself, Gal 6:3.
The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit to God who gave it, Eccl 12:7
Dene Ward
I thought I would never finish. I swept several times in each patch and still the dust flew. Finally I looked at Chloe and muttered, “There is enough dust here for God to make a whole person.” As my mind is apt to wander into strange places, it was only a second or two before I wondered if I was sweeping some Native American from four or five hundred years ago, or perhaps some Spanish conquistador who never made it home.
Now that’s a humbling thought, isn’t it? Some day several hundred years from now, someone may be sweeping me off their carport, or whatever they have by then.
When it comes right down to it that is all these bodies are. As God told Adam, For dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return, Gen 3:19. Too many times we think we are more than that. But answer this: how many billions (or trillions?) have ever lived in all of time, and how many of those do you find in your child’s history book? I imagine the percentage would be point zero, zero, zero, zero something, or even less. How can I ever think that I am so important to the world that I would wind up in that tiny group? I will be surprised if anyone remembers me even twenty years after I am gone, much less several hundred.
Thinking too well of myself will do nothing but cause serious trouble. How many relationships are ruined by self-centeredness? How many tyrants came out of an ego that could not be satisfied? How often has the Lord’s body suffered schisms because someone thought he was more important than any of his brethren?
If you think about it, it is ironic that the only person who was ever as humble as he should have been is the one who changed history forever. While we claim to follow Him, we evidently don’t believe His way is the best. Humility seems to be the most difficult thing we have to learn, and the place we most often fail.
So go sweep your carport today. It might be that you will gain a little perspective.
For if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself, Gal 6:3.
The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit to God who gave it, Eccl 12:7
Dene Ward
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