Remember You Are Dust

For Christians around the world today this is not just your average, ordinary Wednesday.  No, it is a special Wednesday that they call Ash Wednesday.   It is beginning of the season of Lent, a time of preparation for Easter.   Today, faithful Christians around the world will go to the churches of their choice for worship.  While they are in the Ash Wednesday Service, a pastor or priest will place ashes on their forehead saying something like this:  From dust you have come and to dust you shall return.  Repent, and believe in the gospel.   In some faith traditions, the ashes used in the Ash Wednesday Service are made by burning the leaves of the Palm Sunday branches from the previous year.

Remember that you are dust.   That statement has its origin in the creation story of Genesis where we read that the Lord takes dust of the ground and creates Adam, the first human.     The very word “human” comes from the latin word “hummus” which means earth.   It is also the origin for the word “humility”.   We are dirt and dust.    There is something dirty about us not just in how we are formed, but in who we are.   The dirt and dust placed on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday will wash off with soap and water, but it cannot touch  our dirty hearts.  

     

The great missionary of the early Church, the apostle Paul, not only wrote in his letter to the Romans “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”  (Romans 3:23)  but he also declared that he was  chief among sinners.  And so we come to worship on Ash Wednesday not because we are perfect, but because we are sinners in need of a merciful God.  Our foreheads are dirty and dusty on Ash Wednesday, but our hearts and souls are dirty each and every day as we yearn for the grace that is ours in Christ Jesus our Savior.  Have a joy-filled week.-  Pastor Randy Wall

Prayer:  O God, we give thanks on this Ash Wednesday that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  Hear the cries of our hearts seeking the grace that is found to all who humble themselves before your throne of grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.