Day 13 - Monday, March 9
Rung #7: ON REMEMBRANCE OF DEATH
Scriptures: Genesis 3:19; Psalm 23
By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. But because the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Poetry:
The Storm-struck Tree
by Jessica Greenbaum

As the storm-struck oak leaned closer to the house —
The remaining six-story half of the tree listing toward the glass box 
Of the kitchen like someone in the first tilt of stumbling -
The other half crashed into the neightbors' yards, a massive
Diagonal for which we had no visual cue save for
An antler dropped by a constellation -
As the ragged half leaned nearer, the second storm of cloying snow
Began pulling on the shocked, still-looming splitting, and its branches dragged
Lower like ripped hems it was tripping over
Until they rustled on the roof under which I
Quickly made dinner, each noise a threat from a body under which we so recently
Said, Thank goodness for our tree, how it has accompanied us all these years,
The little lot of our yard, thank goodness for the birdsong and
squirrel games
Which keep us from living alone, and for its proffered shade, the crack of the bat
Resounding through September when it dime-sized acorns
Land on the tin awning next door. Have
Mercy on us, you, the massively beautiful, now ravaged and charged
With destruction.
We did speak like that. As if from a book of psalms
Because it took up the sky

YAHWEH PASTORS ‘DUST’ TO NEW PASTURES

Human history is littered with quests for various literal and symbolic ‘immortality projects’, as Biola’s Clay Jones documents in his insightful book, Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It.

We want to live forever. Some attempt such quests by seeking to perfect their body as the center of ultimate meaning and value; some try trans-humanism. Other quests are more of a symbolic nature; projects of glory, fame, and reputation preservation. We want to know that we matter, that our life is significant now and forever.

Adam and Eve attempted their own immortality project. We know how that went. Yahweh responds with what might be perceived as the first, divine smack-down in human history: “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” By such words, some might imagine God putting Adam and Eve under his ginormous, punitive ‘thumb’ and diminishing them back into the ground. But that’s not His character, and nor is that true.

Eden was a place of destiny in the presence of God. The superabundant sufficiency of Yahweh was more than enough for the needs of Adam and Eve. Can you imagine work under those conditions of genuine contentment? It’s conceivable, yet hard to wrap our mind around that reality. Adam and Eve participate with Yahweh in the stewarding of the earth. God provides for them and they experience a holistic “life without lack,” as Dallas Willard would say.

After the Fall, a ‘scarcity mindset’ becomes the default pattern of thinking. “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground . . .” If you want to eat, if you want to survive, you have to toil for it, all the way to death. “The only way I get what I need in life, the only way I will be cared for sufficiently,” one begins to think, “is if I am in control of my provision for my needs.”

Under the fallenness of a scarcity mindset, ‘work’ is perceived to be not much more than a means for self-preservation; it is stripped of any otherliness, closed-in from freely caring for the good of others, and animated by quests to protect by my own well-being. For if you have nothing left to give, how can you freely become a self-giving person?

Adam and Eve’s ambitions move from the allure of “you can be like God,” to the stark revelation of “you are but dust” (2:7); from thinking immortality can be self-realized by acting on the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16), to those ‘in Adam’ facing the truth that only He who was “set in the dust of death” (Ps. 22:15f) and who’s sweat on his face “became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground” (Lk. 22:44) has the power to make the corruptible, incorruptible (1 Cor. 15:53).

The revelation of human life as fleeting dust is the beginning of wisdom for a humility that can open our ears to the revelation that Yahweh remembers we are dust (Ps. 103) yet chooses to love us, care for us, come near to us as Good Shepherd. His remembrance is our honor, our dignity.

“Where, O death, is your victory?” (1 Cor. 15:55) is pastored by “What is man that you are mindful of Him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8). The dust of death is not the final destiny nor word of remembrance for those born in the “image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:45f).

The realism of a Psalm 23 kind of life comes crashing into a “you are only dust” story because what Aslan breathes on surely comes alive! It comes crashing into, disrupting our sense of who we really are, like the overflow of abundance from the heavens, pictured in “Anointing” from Nicora Gangi’s vivid, paper collage.

‘Dust’ and ‘death’ are not the final story. Inspired by her own reflections on the Psalter, Gangi’s collage reveals “hope in the face of death, the possibility of genuine permanence, and the perseverance of meaning in spite of weakness, brokenness, and failure.”

The ‘with-God’ kind of life of Psalm 23 evidences that there is a longing for a ‘still more’ to be realized now. It is not a posture of mere aspirational talk (“Yahweh will be my Shepherd”) but a present, ongoing reality of “Yahweh is my Shepherd.”

When we learn to live out of the super-abundant goodness of God, we are free to serve others because we are learning to become self-giving persons who can sacrifice greatly; for our sacrificing can never out-give the provision of God for our life. We can learn, with great hope, to confidently keep on asking, seeking, and knocking. For even dust becomes illuminated with life-giving-life in the shadow of Royalty.

Prayer:
Hold me, Jesus, cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of peace?
       [from Rich Mullins]

Joseph E. Gorra
Writer and Educator
Biola Alum

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To learn more about the themes of this year’s Lent Project, please go to:
https://ccca.biola.edu/lent/2020/#day-feb-25