Dust Buster

boy in duststorm

Photo credit: Arthur Rothstein, A young boy in dust storm, Oklahoma, 1936 PBS

 

“Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust” Isaiah 26:19

The dust hangs heavy in the air, swirling around hiding the light with haze.

It’s easy to become lost in the chaos, caught up as the torrent of fear flows by, catching us unaware, unprepared.

It’s easy to break and stumble. It’s easy to give in and crumble as the mud starts to cake, heavy, on our skin. We become a sculpture of something else, a figure we never expected to be.

The mirror betrays us. We can’t recognize the person staring back, glass eyes, with fire dimmed to ember.

But there’s a song, a melody resounding above the thickness and our eyes suddenly open to the wonder.

Open your mouth and sing along. Let praise emanate from within. Let it cleanse the air with the sweetness of Spirit. Let it wash the skin and mind with life.

Sing of His greatness, hear Him call you by name, and know that nothing else matters. He sees, He hears, and He adores you.

Figure of dust, know that you are a treasure, transformed by love song into beauty.

Give me Back my Keys!

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I woke up this morning and realized I’d given someone else my keys. Carsick and reeling, I’d been riding shotgun through my life, driven there by my own complacency. Like Dante, I was lost in a dark wood. A spectator barely gazing at the circumstances that brought me to this place, suddenly awake to the fact that I was so far from the path I’d started upon.

The first step on the journey back is waking up, then begins the regaining, the takeover of myself in that moment when the fog has lifted and so have my eyes. Happiness comes from the deliberate life in which I take the wheel and follow truth, peace within allowed freedom from the choking vines of fear. I had no one to blame but myself for allowing them to overtake me.

Hope springs from accepting where I’ve been and deciding to move forward. Hope flows from deep within, the place where the glory dwells. Today I choose to embrace it and fight. Tomorrow I’ll be a little closer to home. In the end, I will win.