Inspiration

MUD TO MAGNIFICENT

By Connie Arnold

The wind spiraled all around me as I was walking up the drive, causing a whirlwind to sweep the dust from the concrete and shower me from head to toe. Dust particles. What use are they to us? We must clean them out of our clothes, and sometimes we need to flush dirt specks from our eyes. Yet…

Yet, God…. “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground…” (Genesis 2:7a, (NKJV), He did not stop there. “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being,” (Genesis 2:7b, NKJV). Talk about making something out of nothing. But God did not speak man into being, He wanted this creation to be hands-on.

As a child, did we envision God making mud figures until he got one made to suit him? I don’t think God had to have any do-overs. Nor do I think that He worked dirt into a puddle until it was the right consistency to become malleable.

I like to think of God whistling to the winds to bring him the needed materials that He’d already created throughout the earth. When He held in His hand the right amount of oxygen, hydrogen, water, and a few other elements, He set to work. From those came fat, bone, muscle, etc., that completed the man. It was such a perfect creation that it needed no covering. The woman that followed was another firsthand creation. God placed this unblemished couple in an unspoiled garden where nothing would mar their perfection: no briars, thistles, or biting insects. This all came from dust. Sin had not yet polluted the soil.

I don’t think the mud that Jesus placed on the blind man’s eyes was just any dirt. He knew the properties in the mudpack. He created it all. And He knows when we become blind or overcome by contaminated elements. “For He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust,” (Psalm 103:14, NIV). He knows that His creation is now fragile, and “Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die,” (Psalm 103:15 NLT). He says, “…call on me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee;” (Psalm 50:15a, KJV).

It won’t always be so. John said, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth…,” (Revelation 21:1a, KJV). Angels may voice this doxology as the curtain rises for this final act:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.