Out of the Dust: "Of Dust & Nations"

When “Of Dust and Nations” moves to the chorus, Kensrue invites us to:

Put your faith, in more than steel
Don’t store your treasures up with moth and rust
Where thieves break in and steal
Pull the fangs from out your heel
We live in but a shadow of the real

“Put your faith, in more than steel,” reminds me of Jesus’ words when one of the disciples’ cuts of the slave of the high priest’s ear, and others ask, “Lord, should we strike with the sword?” Jesus heals the slave and says, “No more of this!” (Luke 22:49-51). The early church understood these words of Jesus to be an explicit call to nonviolence, that reverberated in the body of Christ as persecuted Christians were led to death by Roman authorities. Their faith was in more than the violence that nations put their faith in to try to give themselves power and security.

The next part of the verse calls to mind Jesus’ words to not “build up treasures” for ourselves in this life (Matthew 6:19-21), and to “pull the fangs from out your heel” is to remember the curse in Genesis, where God says about the man and the snake, “he will crush your head and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). This is a curse from which we are being healed in Jesus Christ. However, since the “wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23,) Qohelet’s reminder that our lives are “merest breath” continues to echo in our minds. Similarly, Kensrue reminds us,

It will all be undone, and nothing built under the sun
Will ever stand before the endless march of sand

Everything is “merest breath.” Everything we build will eventually crumble. But at this point in Thrice’s song, we are returned to the chorus. “So put your faith, in more than steel/don’t store your treasures up with most and rust.” Our faith teaches us that to realize that everything will pass away is not a sign that we should lose hope, but instead that if our faith is in our Eternal God whose love is enfleshed in Jesus Christ, then we need not despair. Instead, we hear the one from the throne say “See, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).

And what of Qohelet? He gives us clear, solid, realistic counsel. There is no pie in the sky, no Pollyanna in Qohelet. This is his wisdom: “This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of life God gives us, for this our lot” (5:18).  His final verdict is that because all of life is “merest breath,” we should try to live our lives well, we should faithfully do the work given to us, that we should care for those who are oppressed, that we should enjoy ourselves within reason, and at the end of the day realize that the part we play in history is a very small one.

On this side of the cross we know that we can do this because our past, present, and future is found in Jesus Christ. While we may spend our lives searching for meaning, we ultimately find it in the Alpha and the Omega, Jesus Christ, the beginning and the end. We need not fear the ephemerality of our lives because there is an eternity to be found in God. As the “Hymn of Promise” says,

In our end is our beginning,
In our time, infinity
In our doubt, there is believing,
In our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection,
At the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season.
Something God alone can see.