God also chose the lowly things of the world, the things that are despised and even the things that are ‘nothing,’ so that he might bring to nothing the things that are {thought to be important}, so that no flesh should boast before God. (1 Corinthians 1:28-29)
The fact that God is not impressed by the things in this world which so impress us causes us humans sometimes to miss what is important to our spiritual lives. As one critic of the human mind noted, we often major on the minors.
But this fact does also create an anomaly in our lives – whenever I feel like I am nothing (especially as compared to God), I am also experiencing God’s grace. For as St Paul notes in the quote above, God choses things that are lowly and despised. So, in the “upside-down” values of the Kingdom, when I am feeling lowly or like I am nothing, God may be very near to me or may in that moment be choosing me. In the Scriptures, we find in the lives of some of the saints that they exactly see themselves as nothing because they are in God’s presence.
Abraham answered, “Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. (Genesis 18:27)
But when Simon Peter saw it [the miraculous catch of fish], he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8)
Fr Silviu Bunta comments:
In our tradition, when the human being stands in front of God, he invariably sees himself as dust and ashes. This death, then, is the existential realization of experience of the fact that he is a speck of dust. Indeed, he is a speck of dust with whom God has fallen in love madly, to which he bows, which he becomes. Nevertheless, all human beings of all times, all who have ever lived and all who will ever live, amount precisely to nothing. (Silviu Bunta, THE LIFE OF OUR FATHERS, pp 15-16)
The incarnation occurs because God is in love with the dust and ashes he has created into humans, shaped in His likeness and into whom He has breathed His Spirit. God is the original iconographer and each of us is an icon whom God has created. Each human which comes into existence is an icon of God which is another reason we are supposed to love one another and to love life itself. We may be made of dust but in God’s eyes it is gold dust.
… then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
See also my post Are Humans Gods?
Fraternized 