Ash Wednesday
We live in a world that works overtime to help us forget our mortality. We filter our photos and optimize our diets and hustle for significance, all in the quiet hope that if we do enough, build enough, become enough, then we’ll matter. Maybe we’ll last. Maybe the dust won’t come for us.
Ash Wednesday blows all that away.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
In Genesis, God reaches down into the dirt and shapes a human being from the dust of the ground. Then God leans in close and breathes into those nostrils. The Hebrew word means “breath of life.” What makes us human isn’t that we escaped the dust. It’s that the Living God breathed into it.
You are dust. And you carry the breath of God.
Both things at the same time. You are mortal. You are limited. You cannot save yourself. The same God who says, “You are dust,” is the God who breathes life into dust.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10) is the prayer of Ash Wednesday. Not, “Make me impressive.” Not, “Make me successful.” But, “Make me new.”
The ashes form the shape of a cross on our foreheads. Even in repentance, the cross is there. Even in mortality, hope is there. Even in dust, resurrection is coming.
What do you need to honestly name before God? What are you carrying that needs to be released? Sit with it. Don’t rush it. Let this season do its quiet work in you.
Lent is not about self-improvement. It’s about surrender. And surrender is where new life begins.
Grace and peace to you as we begin the journey.
Pastor Jamey
