All We Are Is Dust in the Wind

1977 music fans will associate this title with a song by a band called Kansas. The song provided a depressing message: Everything, including mankind, only lives for a short time then passes away like wind-blown dust. After that, our existence ceases permanently.

True, we come from dust and to dust we shall return. (Genesis 3:19) But do we have an existence after that? Are we more than dust?

Genesis 1: 27 says “God created man in his own image.” That the creator made mankind is His image suggests that we are much more than dust to Him.

As for life after death, the New Testament refers to it often, and the Old Testament does in the following passages: 

The prophet Daniel proclaimed that “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life…”. (Daniel 12: 2) For those who awake to eternal life, what form do they take?

Ecclesiastes 12: 7 says that after our body’s “dust returns to the ground it came from, (our) spirit returns to God who gave it.” *

Does this spiritual return take place in heaven? If so, what is heaven like? Do our bodies return there too? These questions will be the subject of my next month’s blog.

But for now, take comfort in Scripture that we are more than dust in the wind. And that per Scripture, there is more to existence after our earthly bodies expire.

(*underline is mine.)