Remember that you are dust...

On Monday I was talking on the phone with my mom about wedding stuff. I admitted to her that I hadn't been putting much thought into it the past couple days because of the Feast of the Transfiguration and Ash Wednesday. After a brief pause, she said "You know this is my favorite time of the year. I could go with out the whole Christmas thing, but Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and Easter are three of my favorite days...they do me good."

My mom's love of Lent, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday were passed down to me at some point. I think it was my sophomore year in college when I was in the midst of a faith crisis. I had decided that despite not wanting much to do with God, I would attend the Ash Wednesday service at St. Thomas More Catholic Parish, which was across the street from my dorm. At this point I was still officially a member of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (mentally, I left the LCMS after the dismissal of a district president for attending and interfaith prayer service in honor of September 11th) and thus had never been to an Ash Wednesday liturgy that included the imposition of Ashes. That evening, the sanctuary at St. Thomas More was filled with people, old people, young people, college students from Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University...all of us received ashes and it was the first time in my life that someone had looked me in the eyes and said "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." There was something powerful in those words and the feeling of ashes being traced on my forehead. It is something that I had wanted to experience for a really long time. I remember that one of the lunch room attendants in middle school having ashes on her forehead every Ash Wednesday and wondering what that was all about. I was finally on my way to figuring out what it was all about on Ash Wednesday of 2003...but I still had (and still have) a long way to go.

8 years later there is still something powerful in those words, the power of those words grows stronger each time I hear them. Last year on Ash Wednesday, I traced ashes on the foreheads of many people but the two that stand out are the two week old baby and the young woman who was 8 months pregnant (her son turns 1 today)...in the promise and excitement of new life we were reminded of both the fragile nature of life and our dependence on God's grace to get us through the wonderful times and the difficult times. There is comfort and hope in these words...I didn't see that right away, but I see that now. I see in the crosses traced on the foreheads of the faithful a remembrance of baptism, when a cross was traced on foreheads in oil and words were spoken "child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever."

I also see remembrance of God's deliverance as we connect with our ancestors of faith. In the book of Esther, the Jews put on sackcloth and ashes when they learn that their lives are in jeopardy. Job sits in a pile of ashes after his children had been killed and Job had been afflicted with painful sores. In the writings of the prophets, the people are told to put on sackcloth and roll in ashes. Daniel pleads to God for the sake of Jerusalem with prayer and fasting, dressed in sackcloth and ashes. God delivered the Jews from the schemes of Haman. God was with Job in his suffering and in the end blessed him. God delivered Daniel and the people of Jerusalem.

Having ashes traced on my forehead and hearing the words “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” is a reminder that I am sinful and and broken and it is only by the grace and love of God that I am picked up, dusted off and sent back down the path that God has laid out for us. Being reminded that we are dust, we are sinful and we are fallen and broken is not the happiest of reminders. But then again, we are beginning a journey that will transform us into witnesses of a crucifixion. It is a reminder that we need (or at least I need it), however, because it brings us back to center and reminds us that no matter who we are or how hard we try, in the end we are all the same, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Lord, bless now the journey...