Dust To Dust Series

Dust to Dust

Joel 2:12-14

Morning Lent Prayer, Day 1

INTRODUCTION

There is something striking about beginning a season of prayer with dirt.

Not metaphorical dirt. Real, physical, elemental dust. The kind the priest traces across your forehead on Ash Wednesday and says, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." For many people in the pew, that moment lands with unexpected weight. It is not morbid. It is true. And truth, when we have been avoiding it, often feels like a blow.

Lent begins here, at the point of honesty. Before we talk about fasting or prayer or giving, before we map out forty days of spiritual discipline, we must first sit with a question that cuts through all the noise: Who are you, really, when no one is watching?

Joel was a prophet speaking to a nation in crisis. Locusts had stripped the land bare. The harvest was gone. The people were desperate. And in the middle of that devastation, God did not open with condemnation. He opened with an invitation. "Even now," He said. Two words that carry enormous weight. Not "too late." Not "you had your chance." Even now. The door is open. Come home.

That is the heartbeat of Lent. Not guilt. Not performance. Return.

Genesis 3:19 tells us where we came from: "For dust you are and to dust you will return." That is not an insult. It is a description. We are creatures, not the Creator. We are finite, not infinite. We are formed, not self-made. And Joel 2:12 tells us what to do with that knowledge: return to God with all your heart. The dust of our mortality and the invitation of our God belong in the same sentence. They always have.

This sermon walks through three realities that Lent asks us to face. First, acknowledging our frailty. Second, choosing internal transformation over external performance. Third, resting in the compassion of the God we return to.

1: ACKNOWLEDGING OUR FRAILTY

Primary Verse: "For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust." Psalm 103:14 (NIV)

The culture you live in does not like weakness. It rewards the person who projects confidence, who posts the highlight reel, who performs strength even when the internal world is falling apart. Admitting that you are struggling, that you are limited, that you are genuinely in over your head feels like a career risk, a social risk, sometimes even a spiritual risk. We have been taught, in a hundred subtle ways, that vulnerability is dangerous.

Psalm 103:14 does not share that opinion. God, the text says, remembers that we are dust. The Hebrew word used here for "formed" connects back to the image of a potter shaping clay. God is not surprised by your limitations. He made you with them. He knows the exact weight of what you are carrying and the exact capacity of what you can hold. He does not look at your exhaustion with disappointment. He looks at it the way a good father looks at a tired child: with compassion, not contempt.

Psalm 103:13-14 places verse 14 inside a picture of fatherly love: "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust."

This changes everything about how we approach Lent. We are not entering forty days to prove to God that we are serious. We are not fasting and praying to earn a status upgrade in the Kingdom. We are returning to the One who already knows us completely, already loves us fully, and already remembers what we are made of. The starting line for grace is not "I have it together." The starting line is "I am weak, and I need Him."

There is a freedom in saying that out loud. When you stop pretending to be invincible, you stop spending energy on a performance that God was never asking for. Romans 8:26 reminds us that "the Spirit helps us in our weakness." Not our strength. Our weakness. That is the entry point. The admission of frailty is not the end of faith. It is the beginning.

2 Corinthians 12:9 echoes this: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul learned to stop fighting the fact that he was finite. He leaned into it. When you acknowledge your dust, you create room for His glory.

This Lent, resist the pressure to approach God with a polished version of yourself. Come as you are, which is to say, come as dust. He already knew.

2: TEARING OUR HEARTS, NOT OUR GARMENTS

Primary Verse: "Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity." Joel 2:13 (NIV)