Last Updated on 11/21/2008

Published on 8/28/2008

By Dr. Brad Morris

I thought I knew what dust was .... You know, it is that fine stuff that gets all over everything in your home. If you leave it long enough, creative little fingers write "Please dust me" in it.

It is a minor nuisance in our daily lives as long as we don't let it get out of hand. It is a constant battle to keep everything dust-free. That is the more common variety of dust.

On one of my trips I discovered a dust that is more than just a minor annoyance. In fact, it is downright dirty. Compared to this other dust, what we experience daily needs another word to describe it.

I came across this real dust by way of an innocent-enough trip to the Galapagos Islands. I went as the only North American with the Ecuadorian Bible Society to distribute Bibles to the islands inhabitants. These islands are located about 600 miles out in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Ecuador, South America. They belong to Ecuador.

These islands are the group of islands that got Charles Darwin all fired up to write his "Origin of the Species," his concept of the theory of evolution. These islands were originally uninhabited by people, and in the early 1980s there were only about 3,500 settlers, mostly from Ecuador, but today that has increased to around 22,000.

Again in the early 1980s, the Ecuadorian government only allowed around 25,000 visitors or tourists per year. Today, there are more than 250,000 annual tourists.

The islands get their name "Galapagos" from the Spanish word for tortoise because the first Spanish explorers found the islands inhabited by giant, 600-pound tortoises.

The islands are still inhabited by these tortoises, though they are much fewer in number because of the indiscriminate killing of them at the turn of the last century. They are a protected species today.

I had been on the island of Santa Cruz for a couple of days and had my share of cold showers during my 10-day stay.

The time had arrived for us to fly back to Quito aboard a special military transport sent to pick us up. We took a small converted school bus to make the 15-mile journey to the other side of the island for a short 500-yard ferryboat ride to the small island of Baltrus, where the military runway was. About 2 1/2 miles from the ferry, the rear axle of the bus broke in two.

There began another journey. We had to walk the last 2 1/2 miles. Normally that would not be a bad walk ... but we were in the Galapagos, we were traveling, we were ministering.... So I had my two suitcases, cameras, video camera case, my briefcase, and I also had a 16 mm movie projector with four large reels of movie film that I had been showing. There was no one to help because each one in the group had his own things to carry.

So I began a process that, in the end, amounted to my walking 12 1/2 miles to the ferry. First of all, I picked up my two suitcases and carried them forward about 15 or 20 feet, set them down and went back to pick up the movie projector and reels, and carried them forward and put them down.

Then I returned one last time to pick up the briefcase and the video camera case and carried them forward. I repeated that an innumerable amount of times until I finally arrived at the ferry. The group of Ecuadorians with me all were doing the same thing with their own personal effects and ministry items that they had along with them.

This is true for each of us in our daily life, too. Sometimes it seems that we are carrying a heavy load for much longer and much further than we ever expected that we would.

The trials of life do get heavy on our heart. Jesus has told us that when the burdens of life get to be too much for us to come to him. In Matthew 11:28-30, we read, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

When our group finally arrived at the ferry, we were a ragged-looking bunch of very weary travelers who wished that this ferryboat ride was a whole lot longer than just the 500 yards to the other side. It felt so good to just sit down and rest. To this day when I travel, I try to make everything fit in one suitcase, or at the most two, with absolutely nothing else to carry. I am a firm believer in traveling light!

After we had waited on the plane to arrive for over half a day, we were finally told that it had mechanical problems and would not be arriving for another four days. So back we went by ferry to catch a ride on the back of a flat-bed truck with about 15 other people and all our luggage in a heap and us piled on top of that.

Now, I know some of you are saying to yourself, "What a wonderful trip that was! To see all of the beautiful and exotic sights on those islands."

The islands were beautiful in their own way. Yes, they were exotic. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with some minor exceptions.

On this particular portion of the trip, though, I understood that the sights were beautiful, I was unable to see most of them.

For you see, on this portion of that trip all I saw was the luggage I was sitting on and some of the people who were huddled around me.

The road was so dry and the dirt on it so fine that it was almost microscopic. To walk across it raised a minor dust storm at your feet that would rise all the way to a person's knees when you were just walking at a regular pace.

We were in an open truck bed moving along at a nice speed, but evidently not fast enough ... for the front tires of that truck stirred the dust into such a storm that it engulfed all of us passengers in the back before the truck had time enough to move us out of its path. We were covered in it.

It was hot, and we were perspiring (really sweating). The dust was so fine that we were covered literally all over. It was so fine it penetrated our clothing and covered our bodies through our clothes. When we got back to the hotel, where we had started, all of my white underwear was the color of that reddish-brown dust! We all looked like beings from another planet. Our eyes were white, but all of our faces, our clothes, our hands and even our hair was transformed by this amazingly fine dust so that we all had that same dull reddish-brown dust color.

None of us realized what was happening to us until the truck stopped and the dust settled and we could see one another plainly. Every man, every woman in the group was covered, transformed. It was shocking and hilarious to each one of us.

It actually took several washings of our hair over several days to extract that fine dust from the pours of our hair follicles.

Life is like that dust. We travel through life and we are changed by our experiences until one day we stop and look at ourselves and wonder: "Whatever happened to me?" Sometimes we like what we see, but it's sad to say many times we don't like the results that confront us.

1 Samuel 2: 8 says, "He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. 'For the foundations of the earth are the Lord's; upon them he has set the world.'"

On that trip in the Galapagos Islands, we felt like princes after our baths and that reddish dust was washed down the drain.

A conversation with and a relationship with our God can have the same effect on our lives if we don't like what we see after a time of introspection.

He is able to make us anew. He can wash all the dust of life from our soul and make us pure and clean.

Dr. C. Bradley Morris is pastor of First Assembly of God in Georgetown.

Dust