He remembers we are dust…

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“…for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.”
Psalm 103:14

This photo was taken at my aunt’s graveside service about two weeks ago.  Florence was 91 when she died. My uncle Leonard had died twelve years earlier.

As I called the extended family around the coffin for the graveside service, my cousin Paulette told her three siblings, “The four chairs in the front are for us.”

Her brother Wally replied, “I don’t want to sit there.”

Paulette asked him, “Why not?”

Wally said in a low tone, “Because I don’t want to be next to the grave.”

All of us immediately understood his double meaning.  He did not want to sit next to the grave because he now was the next generation in line to die.  His father and mother were both gone, and now he would be next.

A sobering thought for a whole baby boomer generation that is aging and losing their parents.  A whole generation that thought of itself as forever young are now becoming the next generation that await their own graveside services.

Many Americans my age experience a grand denial of aging and death.  They refuse to think about death and dying and “meeting their Maker.”  They pretend this will not happen to them, this ending of this life and their appointment to meet God face to face.

But thankfully God is not in denial about the sober facts of death.  He “remembers that we are dust.”  That all are destined for the grave.

And He has done something very amazing about this death problem.  He sent His own Son to die that you might live.  He rose from the dead that you might rise.  The Father has had compassion on His children and removed the curse of sin and death from you and me.  His love in Jesus Christ is from everlasting to everlasting, and His righteousness with all those who fear Him.

In Christ Jesus, I need not fear death nor the grave.  Even though I die, yet shall I live.  Praise God who does not abandon us to the grave! Praise God whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting!  Praise God for our resurrection in the Lord Jesus Christ!

Text and Picture Copyright Steve Nickodemus