Just a Bit of Dust!

​While most of. us think that we’re pretty important and should be entitled to all that life entails, when it comes right down to it:

When I gaze to the skies and meditate on Your creation—
on the moon, stars, and all You have made, all:
⁴ I can’t help but wonder why You care about mortals—
sons and daughters of men—
specks of dust floating about the cosmos. Psalm 8:3-4(The Voice)

When it comes right down to it we’re just, "specks of dust floating around the cosmos". Have you ever seen a picture of earth in relation to the universe? A tiny speck. And to to think on that tiny speck are 7.8 billion even tinier specks! And yet for those 7.8 billion tiny specks:

You, beloved, are worth so much more than a whole flock of sparrows. God knows everything about you, even the number of hairs on your head. Matthew 10:30 (The Voice)

Yes, each tiny speck, God know the total of every hair on their head. God knows and as the Psalmist. sys above, God cares!

We can look into the heavens and see the. stars standing as diamonds on a vast landscape where the sun shines by day and the moon by night. We can use telescopic equipment to look further and see the planets and marvel at their symmetry. And if possible we can look further and see an even vaster cosmos that stretches further than any instrument can see. I am reminded of the words of the first man to set foot on the moon Neil Armstrong, as he placed the American flag he said:

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Neil Armstrong, 1969

We marveled at our accomplishment as mankind; yet not then, not now, can we replicate the works of Creation without a seed:

The words of Eugene Peterson’s Message translation for Romans 9:29 sum it all:

Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, "Why did you shape me like this?" Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? …If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered and the sum labeled "chosen of God," They’d be numbers still, not names; salvation comes by personal selection. God doesn’t count us; he calls us by name. Arithmetic is not his focus. Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth: If our powerful God had not provided us a legacy of living children, We would have ended up like ghost towns, like Sodom and Gomorrah. How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their "God projects" that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. Isaiah (again!) gives us the metaphor for pulling this together: Careful! I’ve put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion, a stone you can’t get around. But the stone is me! If you’re looking for me, you’ll find me on the way, not in the way. Romans 9:29 (MSG)

He’s not just talking about Israel here!

Maria