When Dirt Meets Grace

This past week, Hillsong United released their newest album called "Of Dirt and Grace: Live from the Land." If you haven't heard it yet, YouTube and Apple Music are your new best friends. It's good, y'all. Really good. The title of  the album comes from the track Empires. I've heard the song a million times since they originally released it, but hearing the phrase "of dirt and grace" really resonated with me more deeply this time around. It wasn't just a catchy line in a Hillsong track; it was a kind of clarification of who I am at my core. 

I am literally made up entirely of dirt and grace. If you don't believe me, read your Bible. In the beginning, God reached down into the earth, scooped up a pile of dirt, breathed life into it by His grace, and boom... thousands of years later, here I am. It puts things into perspective, doesn't it? At the end of the day, you and I are simply products of dirt and grace. In the midst of all of our circumstances, all our fears, all our accomplishments, all our failures, we are just little mountains of dust that have come alive through God's grace. Apart from the grace, there's just a lot of dirt. With the grace, there's a beautiful spirit and a vessel ready to be used for something greater than itself.

If we aren't careful, we see more dirt than grace sometimes. We see our brokenness, we see our shortcomings, we see our sickness, or our failed attempts to achieve whatever we had set our hopes on, our messy homes, our messed up relationships, our menial jobs, or our forgotten dreams. In our dead-set gaze on the dirt, we start to live life with little purpose, with little motivation, with little passion. We become overwhelmed by hopelessness and fear. After all, who am I except a big pile of dirt? 

When the dirt met grace, though, watch out world. There's life in there. Not just any life, either, but the life of God. The proof is stamped on the dirt that now bears His image. The dirt was no match for that grace. When grace met dirt, it changed it into something strong, something victorious, something beautiful. When we operate out of the understanding that we ourselves are the outcome of God's grace, there's not much that can stand against us and there's certainly nothing that can prevail.

When I realize what I am at my core, I am humbled. Humbled because I know that without God I am nothing at all. I am also strengthened. Strengthened because I know that though there's not much good about this 22 year old girl who can't seem to get through a single day without falling on her face, there's a powerful thing called grace dwelling on the inside of me that is more than enough for me to get up and keep going.