Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday. The Lenten season begins. It's a season of self-denial, sacrifice, repentance and reflection for Christ-followers. These 40 days of fasting and sacrifice echo the self-denial of Christ during His time in the wilderness in preparation for His public ministry.
We are preparing for His Passion and the incredible sacrifice He made for all people.

Jan Richardson has captured the heart of Ash Wednesday and Lent in a reflection that answers Joel's call to a sacred fast in Joel 2. She writes:

Ashes come as a reminder of the ways that humans across history have been horrible to one another, of how we have, with an awful finesse, reduced to literal ashes one another’s homes, buildings, cities, histories, and very bodies.

Ashes can also be a thing of wonder. This day in the Christian year, this day of ashes, tells us that ashes—dust, dirt, earth—are the stuff from which we have been made, and to which we will return. This day, and the season it heralds, seeks to ground us, to make us mindful of the humus, the humility, the earthiness of which our bones and flesh are made. And yet, in the midst of this, the season calls us to open ourselves to the God who brings life from ashes, who works wonders amid destruction, who cries out and grieves in the presence of devastation and terror, and who breathes God’s own spirit into the rubble. It is this God who breathes into us, calling our awful and glorious ash-strewn selves to speak words of life and freedom and healing amid violence and pain.

On this day of ashes, we do well to remember that we, who are made of such stuff, are capable—every one of us—of inflicting pain and destruction. Thinking we are above it makes us all the more prone to it. Yet this day reminds us, too, that God knows what to do with ashes, knows what can come from them. As we cross into the season of Lent, how will we give our ashy selves to the God who longs to breathe new life into us and into the world? Where is God calling us to be a presence of healing amid devastation? How is God challenging us to stand against the forces that deny freedom, the forces that seek the silence and captivity of others? What ashes is God calling us to speak upon?

In this season, what will we say?

May God work wonders amid our ashes in these coming Lenten days.