Do you like to garden? I like to “think” that I like to garden but truth is, I like the finished product. I’m not really a fan of dirt.
Interestingly enough, our creation story involves God metaphorically getting God’s “hands” dirty.
Playing in the dirt . . . and forming all of creation! And if we read the story in the way it was intended, with the Hebrew meaning of the words, the power of this story has the potential and power to change everything.
Scripture: Genesis 2:7 — “Then the Lord God formed the human (ha’adam) from the dust of the ground (ha’adamah) and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being.”
God forms ha’adam (the human) from ha’adamah (the earth). It’s the same word, the same root. We’re not just from the earth — we are of it.
Our story begins with dirt under the Divine’s fingernails.
And then — God breathes.
The word for that breath? Ruach.
Not a gentle puff, but a rush. Spirit. Wind. The animating force of all creation.
The same Ruach Elohim that hovered over the chaos in Genesis 1 now enters dust and calls it alive.
So before there’s a “man” or a “woman,” there is simply ha’adam — humanity — a being made of soil and Spirit.
We’ve misunderstood that for centuries.
We’ve turned “Adam and Eve” into characters in a moral fable, when what the text actually reveals is an ontology — a description of what it means to be.
This isn’t the story of two people messing it all up. It’s the story of all of us — all the ways we forget we are animated earth.
We’ve separated what God joined together: Spirit and soil, heaven and humus.
We treat our bodies as shameful, our planet as disposable, our breath as something we can control — and in doing so, we lose the wonder that we were meant to live in.
Rob Bell once said that the name of God — YHWH — is literally the sound of breathing. Inhale: YH. Exhale: WH.
That means every breath you take — whether you believe or not — is a confession. A prayer. A remembering.
The first thing you did when you came into this world was speak God’s name with your lungs.
And the last thing you’ll do before leaving it is give that breath back.
Maybe faith isn’t about finding God somewhere “out there.” Maybe it’s about noticing that God has been within you all along — moving in rhythm with your lungs.
When you forget who you are — when you feel like dust — pause.
Breathe in the sacred name.
Let Ruach move through your ribs like it did on that first day in the garden.
Because you are still made of earth, still filled with breath, and still held together by the Spirit who refuses to leave.
Reflection Prompt:
You are the meeting place of heaven and earth — dust infused with divine breath.
Where have you been living as though you’re only one or the other?
Grace and Peace,
Andrea