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)
In the ancient Near East, tearing your clothing was the recognized sign of grief and repentance. It was public. It was visible. It communicated to everyone around you that something serious had happened and that you were broken over it. You did not have to mean it. You just had to do it. The external action could exist without any internal reality to match it.
God, through Joel, rejected that entirely. "Rend your heart," He said, "not your garments." Do not perform grief. Actually grieve. Do not perform repentance. Actually repent.
1 Samuel 16:7 frames it plainly: "The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
This is one of the sharper challenges of Lent, because religious practice is extraordinarily easy to fake. You can wear the ashes. You can give up chocolate. You can post something appropriately reflective on a Wednesday. You can show up to the service, sing the songs, bow your head at the right moments, and walk out completely unchanged. No one in the room would know the difference. But God would.
The question Joel's words push us toward is one worth sitting with all forty days: Is there a gap between your Sunday face and your Monday heart? Is the person people see in church the same person who exists in private? Not because God is a spy looking for inconsistency to punish, but because He is a Father looking for a real relationship, not a religious transaction.
Ezekiel 36:26 records God's promise: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." That is not the language of behavior modification. It is the language of transformation. God is not interested in better behavior management. He wants a new heart. The torn garment costs nothing. The torn heart costs everything. And that is exactly the point.
Lent invites you to lay down the performance and let the surgery happen. This is the season to ask God not just to help you act better but to change you from the inside. Matthew 6:17-18 shows Jesus giving instructions for fasting: "When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen." Even the disciplines of Lent are meant to be between you and God, not between you and your reputation.
Tear the heart. Let the outside follow.
3: RESTING IN HIS COMPASSION
Primary Verse: "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)
Why would anyone return? That is the question underneath all of this. If you have drifted from God, if you have ignored Him, lied to Him, run from Him, why would you turn around and walk back? The answer is not discipline. The answer is not guilt. The answer is His character.
Joel 2:13 gives you a description of God that should undo any hesitation you have about coming home. He is gracious. He is compassionate. He is slow to anger. He abounds in love. He relents. This is not the portrait of a God waiting at the door with punishment. This is the portrait of the Father in Luke 15 who sees his son "while he was still a long way off" and runs to meet him.
Lamentations 3:22-23 lands like an anchor: "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Written in one of the darkest books of the Old Testament, in the ruins of Jerusalem, the author still found this to be true. Every morning, new compassion. Every morning, faithfulness. Not based on what you did yesterday. Based on who He is, always.
This is the truth that makes repentance possible. Most people avoid returning to God not because they do not believe He exists, but because they do not believe He will be glad to see them. They expect a cold reception. They expect the record to be read aloud. They expect to have to earn their way back in. And so they stay away, carrying the weight of guilt, which grows heavier the longer they carry it.
Romans 2:4 tells us that it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance, not His severity. The safety net is His character. You take the risk of coming home because you know what is waiting for you. Not punishment. Welcome.
1 John 1:9 is a promise worth standing on as Lent begins: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." That is the transaction. Your confession. His faithfulness. Not your performance. His character.
The dust of Genesis 3 reminds you what you are. The compassion of Joel 2 reminds you who He is. And the gap between those two realities is where grace lives.
CONCLUSION
You began this season with ashes on your head or the weight of them in your mind. You are dust. This is not bad news. It is the most clarifying truth you can start with, because a person who knows they are dust stops pretending to be something else. They stop competing with God. They stop trusting in their own strength. They look up.
"Even now," God says. Even now, after the failures. Even now, after the running. Even now, after the long silence. The door is not closed. The Father is not cold. The compassion has not expired. Come home.
These forty days are not a performance review. They are an invitation. Not to become more religious, but to become more honest. To acknowledge your frailty without shame. To tear your heart, not your garments. To rest in the compassion of a God who has known all along what you are made of and loves you anyway.
Psalm 51:17 puts it simply: "My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise."
Bring your dust. Bring your broken places. Bring the version of yourself you have not shown anyone. Bring all of it.
He is gracious. He is compassionate. He is slow to anger. He abounds in love.
Return.
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Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
Mobile: +91 9933250072
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