Wisdom from the Vineyard by Beth MooreMuestra

Creation brought out the earthy side of heaven. On the third day, God created dirt and liked it. It is a poor soul who confuses dirt with filth or soil with soiled.

Dirt drapes this spinning rock we call earth with a fine epidermis—pocked, porous, and thirsty. Dirt accommodates ants with both heap and hole. It memorializes every creature afoot, lizard and leopard alike, with at least a fleeting footprint. The dirt under an elephant’s toenails may end up as sunscreen for his delicate hide when he tosses it by trunk onto his back. 

The fact is, in the hands of the consummate Potter, dirt is fodder for His wheel. 

After bringing the universe into being by nothing but His voice, God thrust His hands downward into the soil (adamah in Hebrew) and fashioned a human (adam). 

The English word human literally means “a creature of earth,” from the word humus, or ground. [1]

The idea of God at arm’s length is a comfortable thought. We could imagine the Creator with arms long enough to keep His face from getting dusty through the whole creative ordeal, but blowing breath into the human’s nostrils sketches a different posture. 

Here we have a Maker leaning low, near to the ground. Here we have God who is high and lifted up but is now bending over, animating dust. God, mouth-to-nose with man. 

The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 

Genesis 2:7

God created dirt and liked it.

[1]Walter William Skeat, A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (London: Clarendon Press, 1885), 211.