God's Many Meanings (Maybe)

Scripture: After Lot had departed from him, the Lord said to Abram, "Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward. All the land that you see I will give to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants could also be numbered. Genesis 13:14-16

Observation: God's promise to Abraham has always been understood to involve turning his descendants into a huge nation with so many people they cannot be counted. However, that isn't QUITE what God actually says in this interpretation. God says his descendants will be "like the dust of the earth." Yes, he stipulates that the dust cannot be counted by man, implying large numbers. However, there are other reasons why a human cannot count the dust of the earth:

-- It is everywhere.
-- It is blown around by even small breezes.
-- It is hard to collect.
-- It is nearly impossible to control.
-- It is impossible to identify one speck from another.

Then there is this - dust is ... irritating. It affects our eyes, nose, and throat, causing problems without us even knowing what the problem is and usually about our ability to prevent it.

So God called Abraham's nation of descendants "dust" that cannot be counted by man. Eventually the Israelites would be scattered, difficult to identify, with multiple men and people-groups in history striving to collect and control them, and irritating to their neighbor nations for reasons generally hard to understand. It seems God's "dust" metaphor might not have just been about numbers.  Maybe.

Application: All believers - myself included - seek to know God's will and follow his instructions. That become complicated when certain elements of God's will can be interpreted differently. If "dust" can mean "an incomprehensible number" but it can also mean "a totally uncontrollable, scattered irritant" ... then it's no wonder we get confused by topics ranging from ritual law, to the meaning of a treasure hidden in a field.

This reinforces a message from yesterday, about only engaging on very important "issues" and not trivial elements of faith. One very good reason not to engage on the trivial is that it can be very, very difficult to truly know the "right" information. Some scholars take years studying just one or two topical elements of God's word, so certainly I cannot know it all.

That said, the BIG issues - those items that are not open for negotiation, like Jesus' lordship - also do not have multiple biblical interpretations. They even have multiple statements that are both clear and consistent. These are the truths to cling to.

Prayer: Lord, may I seek your will in all matters every day. In addition, may I be careful of my interpretation and understanding of your will. Please help me to not let my biases or desires influence my understanding of you. Instead, may I be open to your pure word, spoken into me as an empty vessel, to then act upon your true heart of love. Amen.