Monday, March 7

Keep stirring up the dust 

Have you ever thought about dust? It’s everywhere! One no sooner dusts off the living room furniture, but in a day or two it needs to be done again.

Haven’t you watched the sun shining through a window in a dark room, when it reveals the seemingly countless number of “minute particles” floating in the air? Yes, we breathe that stuff constantly. Dust settles on anything. If we disturb it, guess what, it can become airborne again and the floating process repeats itself. You can recall the Peanuts character, Pig Pen, who is always surrounded by a cloud of dust and dirt. Maybe that’s a good image of ourselves — only our dust cloud is not so visible to the naked eye.

No wonder that Jesus invites us to follow “in his dust.” It goes everywhere and settles everywhere. The insight is not so much about what dust is but about what dust does. Its presence is constant. Like His disciples, we are given the challenge to keep “stirring it up.”

His admonition to the disciples was to “shake the dust off of their feet” (Matthew 10:14) and move on. If those with whom they come in contact reject them, then don’t just sit around and let your efforts simply collect. Move on to the next challenge to stir up the dust of neglect, fear, anger, indifference, and blame.

It seems to me that Christ’s challenge to us is to be every-where — even though we may not be visible — like the dust all around us. But once the Light of Christ shines on what we do as His witnesses, it becomes as clear as the sun shining into a dark room that is teeming with dust. Keep moving, and don’t allow the dust you disturb to settle down where it becomes visible only because it is just piling up and simply collecting.

Let us pray. Lord, let your light shine on our stirrings so that they may be seen and not just collection piles that do no more than just gather like dust. Amen. 

Pastor David Nelson