Life Beyond the Dust

LORD of all! Our Father who art in Heaven! Almighty God! Our Eternal Lover! Wondrous cause of all things! Of Thy mercy comfort us with the remembrance that Thou knowest our frame, Thou rememberest that we are but dust. Forgive us when the dust from which we come, and to which we go, causes our soul to cleave thereunto; for we, O God! must cry, as did that pious soul of old, “My soul cleaveth unto the dust.” Not alway with love of it do we cling, but oft-times with loathing. Not alway with desire for it, but oft-times with a passion for freedom. But the mean things do so much master us, and base things do so bend us unto like baseness, that our soul cleaveth unto the dust. Oft-times we cannot fly, for we cannot get free, and the limed wings cleave close to earth. Fain would we breathe the heavenly air, and behold the vision of God, but our sins and foolishness make us cleave unto the dust. It is hard to sing Thy praise, when the conscience knows Thy law hath been broken. It is hard to look Thee in the face, when we are hiding from Thy law.

We cleave unto the dust, and to the dust of death we often cleave; for the grave hath more attractions for us than the heavenly mansions, and the thing lost is greater to us than the thing that is promised. The blank places of earth fill the eyes more than the peopled places in heaven; and so we cleave unto the dust, and the shadow of death puts out the light of God, and the fasting sorrows of time blot out the feasting bliss of Eternity.

We cleave unto the dust; but, O God! quicken us, for Thou canst quicken us. Open our eyes, that we may behold the land of promise. Quicken us. Forgive the sullen ears that we have turned to Thy sweet sounds. Make all life to us open, for if faith paint the scene, the great things of the spirit shall be set forth by the things which do appear.

Lord! we cleave unto the dust in all things. We long for “atonement,” “sanctification,” “regeneration.” We cling to the dust of the wooden cross, the spilled blood, the law in its literalness, and we know not the Spirit. Work out for us in spirit all that has been done in deed. Let all justification and redemption be known to us as great things in the spirit, that through the outward body of pious things we may behold the Spirit of God. Show Thyself to us in the Spirit. Help us to worship Thee in spirit and in truth. Forgive those of us whose knowledge is so scant from indolence of mind. Forgive those whose passion is so cold for want of the divine glow. Forgive those who see not their own emptiness, and who never take a view from Pisgah’s top of the Promised Land. Pardon those who do these things wilfully; pity those who do them through ignorance. Lift up the bent head. Make straight the bowed back. O Lord, our souls cleave unto the dust: quicken us, according to Thy word. Forgive us all the foolish things that we have said and thought and done. Forgive us all the evil things that we have wilfully done. Pity us when we go wrong through ignorance; but pity us most when we go wilfully astray.

Lift up the load Thy broken law doth lay upon us. Rid us of the burden that hinders the race. Love us most when we least love Thee. Look on us as erring children, requiring more the Father’s care; as strayed sheep, requiring the shepherd most because of the bramble and the thorn, the torn fleece, the bleeding feet, the unsatisfied soul. And, Lord God! by Thy dear love in Jesus Christ, bring every one of us, through such journeying as Thy large love may deem best for us, into the land where man never falls, nor goes back; where learned lessons are never forgotten, where gathered wealth is never lost, where treasured love is never smitten, where the sunshine is perpetual, and where the light of Life, the Light of God, shines for evermore.

Hear us of Thy mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord.—AMEN.