All our lives crash together in some big ash heap, tossed here by the winds of history and sin.

Or, carried here by the breath of the Spirit.

Or is it each of these.

Ashes, and purpose.

Death, and breath.

We are brought, and we did not do the bringing.

And Jesus reconciles death, and life, and us.

Without Him, there is no us.

Apart from Him there is no home.

Let’s build a house on the dust – or better, let the Lord build it, out of dust.

That’s how He built us.

Let’s all live in a dust house, not made by human hands.

Let’s remember we are dust,

once destined for damnation,

now recalled to life.

Let it hurt.

Let’s crash, and let the friction start a fire that refines as the smoke rises. Let the pressure of the call to holiness squeeze us, press out of us all the darkness, the sludge that does no one good, until

that day, when the living breath bears us to our realest home, and we see all the dust turned to diamonds, and our house of ash, with all us its inhabitants, shows itself to be a right dazzling thing, stronger than the rock of Peter, indestructible, standing in God’s light.

Then we’ll see what we ought to trust now –

that all this crashing

is really just smashing a rock open to find the beauty beneath the crust.

That there is purpose, and the purpose

is death.

And that death is the only path to resurrection.

Come, live and love and fight in this dusty house, our dusty bodies all parts of a broken body.

Come, make peace with God and man.

You were brought, and you did not do the bringing.

You were bought, built, borne, breathed into,

and here is a house for you.

And here is the Lord, broken for you.

There is no other.

Come in, and eat.

…..

[This is a photo of a house in an aspen grove. A single aspen tree is only part of a larger organism. A grove of aspens is considered all one organism, connected by unseen root systems that keep it alive. The individual member does not exist apart from the body.]