Dust to the Dew of Light by Cynthia Fischer

Our elderly mother had been slowly slipping away from us during the last several months after she suffered a debilitating stroke a year earlier. As the end neared, I realized it might be wise to clean out her closets. A year earlier I had recycled hundreds of greeting cards, calendars, and notepads from her desk. I had sorted the expired canned goods (trash) from non-expired ones in her pantry. I had done what I’m good at decluttering. I headed to her bedroom wholly unprepared to sort through her gardening hats, swimsuits, or cosmetics, much less her clothing. I did not realize that this task would be far more daunting than any “Give Away, Throw Away, or Keep” enterprise.

I started with her purses. On the top shelf, in the far corner, was the last purse she had used, tossed there in the hubbub of her post-stroke world. For more than a year it had lived in that corner, unopened, unused, and going nowhere. Once her daily companion to the grocery store or church, and often the object of her “Lost and Found” searches (“Where did I put my purse?”), it now resided in the place of all the forgotten Velveteen Rabbits-in a dark corner covered with a thin layer of dust.

Hairpins, lipsticks, pens, and a used peel-off car license tag were inside. Tucked in her wallet I found her library card signed in her gorgeous flowing signature. What would I do with her lipstick? No one else would use it, but it was her “out-and-about-the-town” smile. And her ID card or her cloth handkerchief? What should I do with ….? became my universal fill-in-the-blank question. 

I found skeins of yarn she purchased a month before her stroke. What should I do with these last things that she had touched and used when she was independent? As much as I’m both practical and sentimental, it made no sense to hold on to all of this. I made hard decision after hard decision, much like ripping off a Band-Aid. Giveaway, Throwaway, Save, Launder, and then Giveaway, Recycle, or Take a Photo and ask my so-talented seamstress niece if she could use some lace collars, beaded white gloves, or even a fur stole. 

My tears flowed knowing that she will not use these things that represented her so well. In my sorrow, I remembered why this is so awful, why I felt so disoriented. We were intended to enjoy our families and friends for unending generations. We were intended to witness the weddings of our great-great-great-grandchildren. We were intended to hold the newborns in the many generations after us. But death rips us away from the family reunions, the birthday parties, the graduations, and the celebrations that will occur when we are gone. The thought of being severed from our loved ones is so grievous most of us do our best to ignore the fact that one day we will die.  

In Genesis 2, when God creates people, he intends them to live in the perfect garden forever. God forms the first man, Adam from the dust of the ground. When I teach young children this story, I hold up a vial of fine dirt. I move it slowly from side to side. One chapter later, Adam and Eve have succumbed to sin, God punishes Adam by saying, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The vial of earth appears again. I tilt it from side to side. No one speaks. The dirt vial is the somber teacher.

The process of cleaning out mom’s possessions was a step in dismantling her life, in passing her things down the road to others, where sooner or later, they will wear out and become trash…dirt. This is the wretched outcome of our human lives. And when we bury her, her body will decay and decompose. It too will become dirt. 

But there is a much better story surrounding my grief. When God expelled his beloved Adam and Eve from the garden, he made a promise that someday a child would come who would trample the snake, the instigator of evil. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, there are references to the reversal of the curse of death and dust. Rather than words of doom, Scripture foreshadows the coming of a Messiah, a Savior who will set his people free. Isaiah refers to a Messiah coming to save his people from their sin and disobedient way of life. In chapter 19, verse 26 he writes, “You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light and the earth will give birth to the dead.”  Psalm 103 talks about God remembering that we are but dust 

The four gospels announce and testify to the birth of Christ, and later, his death and resurrection. The writers of the epistles proclaim what they had seen, heard, and touched. John writes in his first epistle these beautiful words, reflecting the already and the not yet of our salvation: “Even now the darkness is passing, the true light has come.”  

For those of us who believe in Christ’s death on our behalf. We will rise again in the presence of our Savior. Paul writes in I Corinthians 15: 53, “For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written. “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory, O death, where is your sting.” 

It will be a difficult parting for those of us who stand by my mother’s grave. We will be full of hard tears and a deep, unsettling loss.

And yet, Scripture proclaims that for those who trust in Christ’s death on their behalf that death will not win. The earth will give birth to the dead as Isaiah writes.

Isaiah didn’t know how God would do this, he lived in expectation of the Messiah. But we live in the fulfillment of this promise. Christ has come and lived among us. He was crucified. His wounded and dead body was buried in a tomb. But three days later this same body was resurrected. 

We grieve and bury our “worn-out flesh and bone” loved ones. But that is not the end of the story. Jesus made a way for us to reenter Eden. We will rise in new bodies. Jesus is our righteous advocate. His death and resurrection prove that his sacrifice was acceptable to the Father. He made the supreme sacrifice for us, the greatest gift ever given. In the end, death will have no sting. In the end, death will not win. It is this truth on which my tears will dry and my heart will be at peace. 

Cynthia Fischer writes at faithpassing.org about nurturing children in our churches to love and worship God. A Montessorian, Children’s Minister, health care writer, crazy dog lover, and lover of God’s local church, she has logged 40 wonderful years married to Doug. They are parents of two adult children and a set of grand-twins. She has been published by The Gospel Coalition and ByFaith magazine.