Psalm 103:14
In Eden, everything was a hallelujah. Good! Very good! God said (Gen. 1:1–31). Though brown and gray, even dust was a dappled speck of glittering life. Grand as the mountains. Majestic like whales. For even the tiniest fleck which clung to the hidden underside of Adam and Eve’s broom was cherished and celebrated, a treasured gift from God (Prov. 8:26).
Have you ever seen a snow-laden valley blanketed in soft white? When untouched and gleaming in the sunlight, before any human boot has pressed its mud-mixed imprint into it? In Eden, dust was associated with untouched beauty like this. All gleaming light. No muddy boot.
However, when David writes this psalm, he is a long way from Eden and innocence. His sins are many. He’d been sinned against too. He was dust. Not innocent and colorful, but what dust had become. Like all other created goods, dust was now twinged by death. Dingy, the dignity of its tiny fleck in Eden was gone. In the fallen world, tiny flecks are flicked. No one sees dust, and if one does, he tries to rid his room of it.
For out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return. (Gen. 3:19, ESV)
Dust was once Edenic (out of it you were taken). Now dust signals death (to dust you shall return).
When we sin as David had, we wonder about how God remembers us. Will God forget the dignity he gave us, or remembering our frailty, will he shun or abandon us?
In Psalm 103, David describes God as one who remembers and who is merciful and gracious (Ps. 103:4, 8). God is slow to anger and abounding with steadfast love, the kind of love no one can take from us (Ps. 103:4, 8, 11, 17).
As one who remembers, God banishes condemnation when we repent. Look to any horizon in any direction, and all a sinner will see is the shining light of the forgiveness of God (Ps. 103:11–12).
For God is like the most compassionate father (Ps. 103:13). Slow to anger, merciful, gracious, abounding with love, this Father is delighted when remembering the dignity of the one he loves. Such a Father would never give a scorpion or snake to one dearly loved who needs an egg or bread (Luke 11:11–13). On the contrary, such a compassionate Father would use his bold strength to gently brace, fiercely protect, and sacrificially guard the vulnerable child he loves. As a compassionate father who is good, God remembers our frame. He remembers that we are dust.
Whenever I’ve been with parents as they hold their little or grown children in their children’s last moments on this earth, compassionate and loving parents cradle them, speaking words of lifelong love. They remember their loved one’s frame. They cry, in Jesus, declaring the existence of a love that somehow overcomes even this death of deaths.
By faith, they know that it is not the Grim Reaper who comes for their loved one. It is the God who created and remembers their child that comes.
It is not death winning in those last breaths but death taking its last stand.
Remember, in this world, it is not death that is steadfast but divine love.
This divine love, mentioned four times in this psalm, remembers not only that we are dust in death, but also that it was with dust he had given us life.
He knows our frame. He remembers.
So when ash is smeared on our foreheads today, we confront a difficult truth. Death as dust is a scene in our story that we cannot escape. Sorrows for sins against us. Repentance for our own contribution.
And yet, in Christ Jesus, death as dust has never been and will never be the truest thing about us. Death has an enemy. His name is Jesus Christ.
When we receive ashes on our heads today, we declare by faith that death will die. Because death could not hold Jesus in the grave, dust will rise again, recovered to the glory given it in Eden and all the more in the new kingdom that awaits us.
This is why when the earliest followers of Jesus thought of death, they declare it their last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). They learned to see this enemy outflanked at every turn by God’s steadfast love in Christ Jesus, from which nothing, not even death, can separate us (Rom. 8:38–39).
Our God is our great rememberer. He remembers our frames, that we are dust. Held by him, we hope.
Zack Eswine (Rev. PhD) serves as lead pastor of Riverside Chruch in Missouri. His books include The Imperfect Pastor and Wiser with Jesus. He writes at The Good Dark (thegooddark.substack.com) and is cofounder of Sage Christianity with his wife, Jessica.
