Are You Coming or Are You Going?

A little girl once said to her mother, “Mother, we learned in Sunday school today that we came from dust and that we are going back to dust. Is that true?”
“Yes, darling, that’s true,” her mother answered.
“Well, I just looked under the bed and someone is either coming or going”, she quipped.

We did come from the dust. God created man from the dust of the ground. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). Scientist say that all the elements of the human body can be found in common dirt. So the next time someone treats you like dirt, you can have a different perspective. However, that is not all there is to a man. At funerals they say, “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.” Solomon said, “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). Each of us have a soul which came from God.

Since our soul came from God and it is eternal, perhaps we should determine where it is going. God gave it. It will return to God. What God does with it when it returns to him will depend a great deal upon how we lived our life. At the end of his book Solomon wrote, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into Judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13,14). To this the apostle Paul adds, “For we must all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

The Bible is the sole manual given to us by God on the care of the soul. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16,17). Maybe its time to dust off your Bibles and prepare the soul before your body returns to the dust and it is too late.

– Daniel R. Vess

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Categories: The Forum