MERE DIRT AND DUST

For my lunch on Monday [ off day/ house cleaning day ] my wife, Nellie baked me purple sweet potatoes. Really healthy eating you know? She asked me to eat it with the skin. As I broke the potato into half, I began to marvel that this potato that I am about to eat have been in the ground, dirt and dust for some time. In the ground, it had been growing, getting its needed nutrients and minerals. The dirt and earth not only did not destroy the potato but it has been part of the source of life for the potato. Now I am getting some "life" from this dirt-originated potato. Wow!
About 2 years ago, my dog died and I remember burying it at the back of my house. It was quite a big dog, so I really had to dig a deep hole, poured some acid and cover it with dirt. I think most of us bury dead things in the ground -do you not? Ya, some just throw the dead animals into the longkang [ big drains ]. The point is this - the dirt is not contaminated by the dead: it covered the stench of the decay, processed the rotting flesh and it the end given the necessary time it itself became more fertile to support life that will grow in the ground.
Actually dirt is so unnoticed; it is trampled on, spat on, shit on and human just throw dirty stinky stuff on it. But it is so resilient - and it had the power to transform the dirty, decaying, dying into LIFE.
I read somewhere that the root word for dirt comes from " humus": this is where we get the word humility as well. Does our "humility" have such power as the dirt on the ground.

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantage of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't clain special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a slefless, obedient death - and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.
Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyong anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth - even those long ago dead and buried - will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father. The MessageL Phil 2: 5-11.

If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. ...a servant is not greater than his master....if you know these things, blessed are you if you DO them. John 13: 13-17 NKJV