Dust has power.
I was a baby when Mount St. Helens erupted. I grew up hearing stories of the weeks-long impact it had as far east as our North Dakota prairie home. It took several days, but eventually this fine, silt grey dust made its way across the spring prairie. Sitting on cars, lightly tinting the flower blooms, changing the smell of the valley from its usual thick, black, muddy earth smell to the slightest metallic scent.
And what it did to the sunsets. Prairie sunsets are already among the most majestic of God’s creation. So flat you can see the curve of the earth, the light stretches itself endlessly over the rounded sky, touching the black earth in spring, making the wheat dance with amber flecks in summer, and reminding us we are not in control as the winter wind lifts crystals that sparkle at dusk.
But in 1980, dust filled the sky, creating dark bursts of red, followed by long, lingering purple brushstrokes as the earth curved into eternity. Sunsets people have talked about for 45 years—can you imagine?
It was the dust. Powerful dust that was pressed out by the heat of the earth, four states away, floating over mountaintop peaks. This dust of the earth traveled half a continent. It covered every square inch of land. It filled the skies and changed the sunsets. Dust can change the sunsets… That’s the power of dust.
This week, we hear the words, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The dust within us is made up of minerals from the earth. Elements landed on the planet as a result of cosmic collisions billions of years before any child of God ever took breath.
We are dusty creatures…. We travel the continent, covering every square inch of land. And yes, we, dusty children of God, change the sunsets—in our love for one another, when we remind another to cast their eyes to the sunset and see it. When we share life and beauty and joy, we dusty creatures change the very planet from which we came.
Dust is powerful.
We, dusty souls, beloved by God, are powerful. It’s nothing short of miraculous that the collection of dust that makes up our being—from iron of asteroids and calcium deposits once buried deep—received the breath of God, became filled with life, and formed into us. People gathered together to be fed with the bread of life.
And it is no less miraculous that any one of us, wandering this dusty temporary home, finds ourselves here with other dusty beings and shares time in this fleeting, beautiful life with them. That we share hopes, memories, and God’s undying love with one another—knowing each one of us will one day lay down, release our last Holy Spirit-filled breath, and return to dust.
But that’s really what makes life life, isn’t it? Filling our dusty, Holy Spirit-filled, grace-drenched lives with love for others because Christ first loved us.
Changing sunsets.
All of us dusty beings finding one another together in this place is as miraculous as any one of those little dust particles from Mount St. Helens swirling in the air of the North Dakota prairie, changing the sunset, before landing by another dust particle and tinting the orange blossoms of a daylily in my childhood garden.
Remember, you are dust. Remember how powerful and miraculous dust is.
Change the sunset-
Pastor Tracy Paschke-Johannes