Dust

Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.


With those words, Lent commences. From the earth God created humankind, and that is where we all end up--six feet under, slowly returning to our original materials. Hearing that announced to you makes you aware that you are not immortal. Quite the opposite--our time here is short, So how do you want to spend it? Loving and being loved by God? Or struggling against God's warm embrace? Hopefully that's a no-brainer.

Being reminded of our ending is also a reminder of our new beginning in Christ. Life to death to life. Tacit in the pronouncement of your mortality is the proclamation of the good news waiting for you beyond this life--a promise so certain it pours up over the lip of the future and splashes down into the present! Infusing it with a beauty and worthiness that it didn't have before. Dust, yes--but we are God's dust!

Tonight, as you come forward for an ashen cross upon your forehead, let it be a reminder to you of things fleeting--and things that are forever more!

Please visit each day during Lent for reflections, sermons, poetry, guest writers, and pictures.