Lately, due in large part to our recent fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration, I’ve been thinking about time, its passage, and the magnificent mysteries that lie beyond this “vale of tears”, as our forbears so quaintly put it. Not long ago I was reminded of something I had written in my early blogging days. It fits nicely with my current ruminations. I hope it provokes some ruminations of your own, along with, perhaps, a smile. 

I have always had a somewhat cordial relationship with housework. Except for brief periods when our kids were small, I had always, until recently, done all my own cleaning. All that bending and stretching was, you know, a good thing. Cheap exercise, I would tell myself.

And I’ve never minded most aspects of keeping house. I can watch my beloved British dramas while ironing. I hover over the laundry a bit. Two rinses so there is NO residual detergent. With a system, cleaning bathrooms is cinchy. Vacuuming is a bit of a bore, but it goes quickly and, for crying out loud, a machine does the real work.

But dusting?

It is the reason conscientious homemakers may come to dread sunlight in a room. Its beams act like a magnifying glass, undermining one’s best efforts. It is sneaky and subversive. It doesn’t lie quietly on a normally shiny surface. No. It shouts, “Inattention!  Sloth!”

All housework is, to some degree, a lesson in the degeneration of the earth. Man is flawed and unclean, the earth is flawed and—well, it’s pretty much dirt. Naturally, it ends up in the house. I have decided, upon serious reflection, that one of the chief purposes of dusting is to remind us of mortality. And the fact that I used the words “serious reflection” and “dusting” in the same sentence reveals the deleterious effect it has had upon my psyche.

But back to mortality. Dust is, after all, fine particulate matter composed of dirt and skin and fabric and innumerable other substances floating around and landing on virtually everything. In fact, due to the wonders of science, we now know that dust is not just annoying, it has friends—microscopic creatures so hideous they belong in the category of  “What was God thinking?” Go ahead and vacuum your mattress, take the gleanings down to your neighborhood science lab, and see what shows up under the microscope. You’ve been warned.

Dust is tangible evidence of the slow decay of the planet and everything on it. Including us. Why? The Fall, of course. Think about the words that accompanied Adam and Eve as they were being ushered out of the Garden of Eden:

For dust you are, and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:19 NKJV).

It’s unclear whether those two understood that they had been formed from the dust of the ground, and this proclamation, along with everything else God shared in those moments, likely came as a huge surprise. But the point would have been unmistakable. One writer puts it this way:

In consequence of his transgression, man forfeited the privilege of immunity from death and must now return to the soil from whence he sprang.

There you have it. That thin layer on top of your table is an omnipresent reminder of the one bad choice that doomed man to mortality from which he would escape only through the great love and provision of the Savior:

 . . . Jesus Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel . . . (II Timothy 1:10 NKJV).

What a fantastic thought to encourage us in the winding down of these summer days. And one day, we’ll be

changed from this mortal

to immortality

in the twinkling of an eye

as the (lovingly remembered) gospel song says. This is, by the way, too good not to share. As a sign outside a local church here where I live says: “Keep the faith—just not to yourself.”

Dusting, then, is the only household chore where you might suddenly stop and ponder the glorious effect of the gospel.  And there is another benefit: it’s a surefire cure for knick-knacks. If it has to be dusted, I can live without it.