To Dust You Shall Return

The Call to Remember The words of the Ash Wednesday liturgy, echoing Ecclesiastes 3:20, ring with clearer truth with every passing year: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Remember. In a very real sense, those words parallel the call to number our days. To number our days is to perform an act of remembrance, and a much-needed one. The false story of anti-aging woos us to forget to remember. The true story calls to us that remembering is for our good. Scripture shows us this pattern of remembering that we are dust. People who grieve in the Bible throw dust on their heads and sit in the dust. Psalm 103:14 tells us that God, too, bears in mind our origin: “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” He remembers, and he reminds. In fact, he reminds Moses of his dusty origins in one of the best-known stories of the Bible. In Exodus 3, Moses is passing an average day herding sheep on Mount Horeb. He sees a bush that burns but is not consumed. God calls to him from the flames, and he approaches, to be met by the words, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5). Not “take off y...