Faces in the dust

Grace and peace to those who love our Lord Jesus with an undying love,

    This phrase "keep your face in the dust" has become an oft repeated admonition in our circles.  Have we really taken it to heart?   A picture entered my mind as I was praying this morning of what would result from the repeated practice of keeping our face in the dust. 

    The picture I saw will never occur by sporadic and occasional placing of our faces in the dust.  What I saw was the result of a diligent, daily, continual practice of placing our face in the dust.   Continually throwing ourselves upon the ground and burying our face in the dust would eventually begin to make an impression upon the ground itself.  Our face and body would eventually begin to act like a human shovel moving dirt aside and causing the impression to slowly become deeper and deeper.  The deeper the impression become, the less of our body would be seen.  Over a long period of continued burying our face in the ground (and we can never bury our face without at a minimal of being on our knees or laying prostrate) the impression would eventually become deep enough to be a grave where we could bury ourselves.  We could lay our whole life down just by continually keeping our face in the dust, and our body would return to the dust from which it was formed and release our spirit from its prison.   Then people could walk right over us without even realizing it.  We ourselves would be one with the dust and realize that people always walk upon dirt.  Fully buried in the dust we would finally be able to "REST IN PEACE",  and experience the peace that the righteous find as they lie in death. 

      How can we know that we are really in this spiritual process of humbling ourselves and walking in all lowliness?   It was said of the early church, as recorded in the first few chapters of Acts that "GREAT GRACE WAS UPON THEM ALL."   We know that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.   This is how we are able to tell that the early church was walking in GREAT LOWLINESS.  Their faces had to have been in the dust.  We will never experience GREAT GRACE being upon us until we first experience GREAT LOWLINESS BEING IN US!  

     Another way to tell that we are continually keeping our face in the dust is this - there will always be more dirt upon ourselves than upon others.   Proud ones go about stirring up dissension, flinging dust in the air and covering others with it.  Those who are continually placing their own face in the dust will be dirtier in their own eyes than those around them.