The stuff of stars

August's dying day proved a delight in Madison, Wisconsin as my brother and I enjoyed a patio on Capitol Square drinking coffee and catching up on the last year.

During one of the seven-minute lulls, a card carousel just inside the coffee shop caught my eye. "You are made from the stuff of stars," it declared. 

Indeed, there is truth to the claim. The stuff of the cosmos is the stuff of your cells. The sun churns hydrogen into energy and as you are mostly hydrogen and oxygen in their moister mix, you are the stuff of the sun. The minerals within your bones and muscles are in the mix of the Moon, calcium, iron, and magnesium to name a few.

Being an edgy coffee shop the card no doubt intended to boost its receiver from the muck and mire of life. You're not ordinary. You're not plain. You're the stuff of stars after all.

Ah, the romance. As bright as the stars shine so, too, can you shine. Can't you just see the Hollywood movie? The protagonist doesn't die, they just dissolve into the stuff of stars.

The Bible declares the same thing, in a way.

God tells Adam in the third chapter of his book to humanity, "Dust you are and to dust you shall return" but God doesn't tell the cream of his creation this tidbit to bolster his brooding heart. Adam had just rebelled against his Creator (I've often wondered how long it took for that to happen), and God was fulfilling the promise he made in declaring that such rebellion would lead to Adam's death. 

Being created with and returning to the stuff of stars wasn't man's ultimate end nor his ultimate good. The essential substance of man is of much greater value, and therein lies the sanctity of all humanity from the greatest to the least.

It's not that God created man of dust that makes him unique--he did that with all of the animals, after all (Genesis 1:24)--man is unique because God created him in his image (Genesis 1:27, 9:6). It's not the material of man, it's the immaterial that matters. The fact that we are of the stuff of stars doesn't highlight that point, rather it highlights our fragility. Knowing we will all die touts the truth that we stand hostile to the God who crafted us in his image for dust we are and to dust we shall return.

And yet, there is a reconciliation. Man couldn't do it any more than a broken computer can fix itself. God reconciled man to himself when he took the same dust to himself and died the death that men deserved (Romans 5:6-10).

I never saw the platitude that adorned the inside of the card. It should have read, "And still you will die," for that is the sobering truth we must each swallow. Will that turn us toward hoping to the stars our hoping in the One who crafted the stars and crafted each one of us in his image?