Dust and Ashes

 We begin the Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday. Prior to the day, we burn the palm crosses left over from Palm Sunday the year previous. The palm crosses, before they are made into ash, remind me of the rejoicing at the coming of the Messiah into Jerusalem. And yet, a few days later, the same crowd are baying for the blood of Jesus.  The hopes of the crowd turn have turned to dust and ashes. Or perhaps they are just fickle like crowds can be. Or perhaps it was malice, envy, scapegoating, or betrayal that turned them. Any number of these all too plentiful human realities explain the change in a those few short days. Death will turn us to dust and ash, but we invariably turn so much goodness in our lives into dust and ash well before death. So the ash points us to our mortality. We are dust and ash. To be marked with the sign of the cross in ash is to acknowledge this deep need.

Come Easter Day we will celebrate resurrection. He is risen! But first, we connect at ever deeper levels with our need. Unaided, we cannot save ourselves. We wait in the ash of the frailty of our humanity and our lives for that new life that death could not hold. (And sin could not stop.)