Job 1

“O dear Friend, when your grief presses you to the very dust, worship there!”

C. H. Spurgeon

We came from dust. Our bodies will die and decay and return to dust. Once or twice a week, a good housekeeper runs a soft cloth over her furniture to remove the thin layer of dust that has accumulated. She might spray the cloth with a polish or a cleaning solution. I say “good housekeeper” because although I keep my house, I would not place myself in that “good” category. Mainly, because the should-have list just grows…like the dust on my furniture. I would rather read than dust.

Spurgeon preaches, “…when your grief presses you to the very dust, worship there!” I know he meant the dust of the earth. But, my vocation draws my mind to the grief-cleaning I do when life is too heavy. If the house is sparkling clean, what bad could possibly come? So I get off the phone with hurting family members and dear friends and clean my dusty furniture. Not once or twice a week, but as the grief presses me there. This is the kind of mindless activity that lets me pray and cry out to the God Who created me from dust. He draws my mind to Himself in the middle of heartache. It isn’t lost on me that He also could have prevented the heartache. He could have kept my dear friend from medical disasters. He could have prevented the death of my childhood friend. God could have healed the disease before the diagnosis. But He didn’t. So I dust.