A View From Above

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

When you think about all the great things that men and women have done over the centuries of human history it is hard to understand how we could be made from such a common substance as dirt. But that’s what the Bible says. It is humbling to realize that man is made from something so common. The word dust is mentioned in 102 passages of the Bible. The word means dry or loose dirt. God made man from dirt.

People who succeed at navigating life well and get to the end without having suffered great disappointment or great loss will still die. They may be able to look back and say “I did well for my wife and kids. I built a good business. I was a good man, and never even got a parking ticket.” I say hooray for those who can look back and say their life was a success. The flip side to this is the person who cannot make the same declaration. They were not good. Their goals were never met. They suffered much pain, sickness and disappointment. They might even have become a criminal in life and spent their years in a cage. No one plans for this to happen. They aspire for success, but the gravity of sin and weakness pulls them down and causes them to forget right and wrong and just do what seems right for the moment. Either path ends in dust.

This is where redemption comes in. When a person looks to Christ and believes in the power of His work on their behalf, this individual is no longer just dust, controlled by the wind of life, but an object of God’s grace, love and mercy.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-6)

As God breathed the breath of life in Adam, and brought him up from the dust, we who put our faith in Jesus are lifted up from this world system and made to sit together with Him in the heavenly places. In other words, though we might seem to be an insignificant speck, we are in fact made alive eternally, raised up, and seated above.

We can have a new view. We no longer have to look up at the hurts and sins that weigh us down, but we can look forward with a vision of a new life in Christ, knowing that old things are past away and all things have become new for the one who trusts in Jesus. Our position is not looking up at our problems, but looking down from above with a heavenly perspective that says, “Success in life is great, but do I want to come to the end of my life and be able to show all the stuff I was able to accumulate?” The answer is no. I want to say, “In this life I found freedom not to be controlled by the necessity to succeed, but by the need to know the Savior and make Him known.” That is a view that can’t come from the dust of the natural life but comes through the above life of Christ.