Sunday, Feb. 7: Another one bites the dust!

Have you ever ridden in the back of a pickup truck down an unpaved, country road? I remember living in Arkansas for a couple of years in a sparsely-populated area of farmland. With four kids in the family, most of the time we went somewhere in my grandfather’s truck the bed was the only place roomy enough for all of us. Anytime we would pass another vehicle, we would eat their dust. It was worse when there was a slow-moving vehicle in front of us heading in the same direction, as that dust was so pervasive that even with your mouth closed, you found yourself chewing it. Each time a car passed us by, it was “Another One Bites the Dust.”


There sure was a lot of dust around in biblical times. God promised Israel that if they followed Him and stayed away from idols, He would water their crops and land. We know that the Israelites were similar to us, and often strayed from the Lord. Consequently, their land had much drought. Without that water washing the land clean, the dust was prevalent.


In the Bible, as well as with Hebrew tradition, there were many references to dust. In yesterday’s devotional, we were reminded that before Jesus died, He washed the dust from the feet of the disciples. Dust is emblematic of death or the grave, as we are reminded in the phrase, “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” Though that is not a direct quote from the Bible, it does reflect the thoughts of Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 3:19. Man was formed from death, was given life and will return to death, though that refers to the mortal body, rather than the spiritual one. Only Jesus can wash that death from our walks! Jews mourned by putting on sackcloth and covering themselves in ashes. An extreme showing of affliction or humiliation occurred when sitting in the dust:


“Come down and sit in the dust,
O virgin daughter of Babylon;
Sit on the ground without a throne,
O daughter of the Chaldeans!
For you shall no more be called
Tender and delicate.”
Isaiah 47:1


We live in a world that is authored by God, but controlled by Satan. Dust is everywhere
and that dust is the death that Satan wants to give us. He is the prince of the power
of the air according to Ephesians 2, and because of him, there is dust in the wind. Let
Jesus wash that dust from your dirty feet and give you eternal life with Him!