dust devils

O my God, make them like whirling dust,

like chaff before the wind.

Psalm 83:13

In this psalm Asaph prays for God to reduce Israel’s oppressors to mere dust in a whirlwind. The poetic imagery is a faith-filled appeal to God to make His power and rule known. It asks for God to rule as final Judge definitively over wicked nations that mock and disobey Him and conspire against His purposes for His people.

Before Asaph makes this request of the Lord, he appeals to God’s faithful deliverance of Israel from evil enemies of their past (Psalm 83:6-13). None of them truly succeeded in eradicating the children of Israel or of taking permanent possession of their land. God faithfully kept His covenant with Israel to be their God, to give them their land, and to save them from their enemies as they faithfully endeavored to keep His laws. Israel was under divine protection. God would hear this prayer.

As I contemplate the fiercely loyal love of God and the fine, slow grind of His justice, I realize that all rebellion against Him shall suffer this same fate at the close of history. All human efforts to rise against God and His redemptive work shall fail. It shall be ground as fine dust under God’s judgment and carried away in the whirling dust devils of history’s oblivion. Only the kingdom of God shall be left.

The wicked are like chaff that God’s wind drives away (Psalm 1:4; 35:5). All the most powerful human nations that rise in defiance of God are just more chaff before His wind (Isaiah 17:13; 29:5). All the schemes of unregenerate humanity are just dust blowing in God’s wind (Isaiah 4:15).

Lord,

From dust I am created and to dust I shall return. All human civilization will blow away before you like so much dust in Your whirlwind at the Day of the Lord. And only You remain... faithful, constant, secure, and beautiful. I rest my soul in Your unchanging, stable, permanent grace, even as all this dust is destined to blow away.

Amen