Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart. - Joel 2:12
Each
year as Lent begins, I am reminded that my son was born on Ash Wednesday. While friends offered prayers for new birth we
also shared a vivid reminder of our mortality as ashes were spread on our
heads. This simple ritual of smearing
ashes on our foreheads is amazingly simple and clear. This mark reminds us that we all are mortal,
that we, like everything else on this earth, were born and will die. This is a certainty that we share with one
another. Today, we are reminded of the
mystery of life – the cycles – the beginning and the end. We are reminded of who we are and from whom we come.
Ash
Wednesday is a reality check, a day that we step up and look at who we are,
what our relationship with God is and how we can, return to the LORD, as the
prophet Joel tells us to do. We are invited to journey inward where we
can encounter and confront all that separates us from God. It is also a time to journey
outward where we can encounter and confront that which causes pain, damage and
separation with others.
Lent
calls us to acknowledge birth and death, dying to the old in order to be born
into the new, giving up those things that get in the way of God and one another. Lent is a journey of returning, a journey in
which we ground ourselves, where we come back to reality, where we remember our
baptism and our call to God. Lent is a
time of restoration. It is a season of
change, a season in which we are called to empty ourselves so that we might
find new life, new birth, and new health in our life with God.
This
is the season to remember, to reconnect with who we are, with who we can be,
with who God made us to be. We are human
beings made in the image of God. We are
made of dust and to dust we shall return.
(This was originally written for Episcopal Relief and Development's Lenten Meditations 2012. Please support the work that they do by going to www.er-d.org and donating to world relief and development.)
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