Yes, It's Ash Wednesday

I love Ash Wednesday. I think it outranks pretty much every other holy day as far as personal preferences go. That probably sounds strange to most people.

I love burning the palms from the years before and the messiness of it all--the smoke, the fire, the crumbling leaves, the scent that lingers.

I love the quietness of the service. Maybe there are Ash Wednesday services that are loud, but I can't imagine one.

I love the fact that we take time to confess that there's brokenness, sin, in our world. I love the fact that we take time to confess that there's brokenness, sin, in each of us.

But most of all, I love the reminder spoken with the imposition of ashes: "You are dust, and to dust you shall return."

In so many ways, Church is about learning God's story, a story radically different from what our culture tells us. On Ash Wednesday, we see the chasm between the two stories, if we're willing to look.

Look at a billboard, a magazine, those sidebars in your browser, probably even inside your medicine cabinet or on your bathroom counter--youth! It's what's best. It's what we're seeking, or at least what we're told to seek. Smooth skin. Hair with no gray. Toned body. White teeth. None of the signs that naturally come with living. Perhaps most telling is the fact that ageless is one of the best adjectives that can be applied to a celebrity. I, who have to Google many names from pop culture because I really have no clue who they are, still can name a few folks who get the title of ageless.

Then, there's God's story. That story reminds us we are dust and to dust we will return. We will die, one day. There's no way around that in the world that we know. Each year, I offer that reminder to folks from four years old on up to about eight-four years old. Then, I turn, and a colleague offers that same reminder to me.

You are dust, and to dust you will return.

And that's holy, too. God who formed the dust into something will be ready to receive the dust when it is only dust, again. As I find a few gray hairs at my temples and notice a few lines at the corners of my eyes, I am comforted at the reminder: I am God's, in life and in death.