A handful of dirt.
How common and without any real value or worth.
Even when taken in the hand and shaped into something – it isn’t until it serves it’s purpose that it’s value is realized.
And can the dirt be so proud of its value above other dirt? Or only stand in fear and awe that the hand of the creator has used it for His purposes? Can it look at another hand full of dirt and criticize it for what it has been fashioned into when the dirt is the same, but the creation is of the hand of God, not the work of the dirt itself.
Why then do we so quickly exalt ourselves and look down on others?
Pride.
Vanity.
Self worship.
The opposite of loving service.
Or do you lay claim to your own works?
Will you be satisfied with what you have “earned for yourself”?
Or accept the truth about the value of “your works”?
Will you fall on your face like a dog before it’s master — asking for food from your master — because you have no power to make food for yourself?
Will you recognize the free gifts — of the hand of God upon your life and His breath in your lungs — as His doing and His alone, so that He might receive ALL the Glory, and so that you might not rob Him by claiming it for yourself?
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. – Romans 12:3 ESV
then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. – Genesis 2:7 ESV
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” – Genesis 3:19 ESV
There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. – 1 Corinthians 15:40, 42-58 ESV
Harold J. Ballinger 