I am tired, I am broken, and I am beat down from attempting to live a selfish prideful life. You have called me to a life beyond the dust and Lord I need Your help, I need Your forgiveness, I need Your joy, I need Your grace, and I need the hope that only You can offer.
I do not deserve Your grace, Your love, or Your forgiveness, but You have offered it ALL nonetheless and I need Your help accepting it. Remind me Lord that I am Yours, that you purchased me for a price that is far greater than I am worth. Use me for your kingdom oh Lord, and let my life not be one that is lived as though it ends in the dust. Let me lay my life before Your feet and worship You once again. Please forgive me for acting foolishly and living a life that is not worthy. I am sorry for all that I have done and all that I have forgotten. Please understand that I know, in the depths of my soul, that I do not deserve your grace, your love, or your forgiveness. My heart has been hardened and my spirit has become angry. Lord I have lost my joy, my hope, and my compassion. I have tried to stumble through this life on my own and I cannot bear the weight anymore.
Ohh how I have forgotten what it feels like to follow You. My God, my Savior, my Master, my Father oh how I have forgotten of the sacrifice you have made for me. That in this process of laying down our fears, our struggles, temptations, and failures, that Christ will strengthen, empower, protect, and deliver us–for this we must pray and He WILL never fail us.įor the duration of Lent, let us learn to focus on our call to the cross–to meet Jesus where death has been overcome–and to pray for one another so that we may be healed and raised up in Him and his plans for each of us to bring glory to His name. But this is the death that brings life! As we learn to do this and try to make it a daily part of our lives, we must pray for each other. Our own pride holds us strongly from wanting to lay it all down, the good and the bad, at His feet. Jesus calls us every day to a death to ourselves by taking up the cross each day and sacrificing our lives to Him in full, ultimately making our life not one for our own, but for Him.įor most, this is not an easy thing. However as a Christian, death in many ways is a new beginning. “To dust you shall return”–a powerful reminder of our weaknesses and of the human condition, that all must die. Even so, in Christ, we live in the eternal hope of the resurrection. Whether in a formal Ash Wednesday service or privately in our homes, we can use tomorrow, the first day of the Lenten season, to remember that from the dust we were made and to the dust we shall return.
On Ash Wednesday we admit our limits and acknowledge the brevity of this life. Wearing the ashes is a way to repent of our rebellion against God and “confess our sins one to another” (James 5:16). People see the mark of the cross at their work, in class, and at the grocery store. The ashen cross the congregant wears is an outward sign of both repentance and hope. But with Christ, they are a reminder that, though our bodies will one day return to dust, we have already been given the hope of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:22).Īsh Wednesday is an opportunity to publicly profess our faith. Without Christ, the words “remember that you have to die” are hard ones. We remember that we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, and yes, we all must die (Romans 3:23).Īsh Wednesday is a day of hope. We remember that from the dust we were made and to the dust we shall return (Genesis 3:19). Ash Wednesday is a day where we take a page from the book of Job and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:6). During Lent, we focus on our need for the death and resurrection of Jesus we focus on our need to be forgiven. So what is Ash Wednesday, and why do many Christians observe it?Īsh Wednesday is a day of repentance. We are free, but not required, to do the same. In fact, some instead say, “Remember that you have to die.”įor more than a thousand years, Christians around the world have begun the Lenten season this way: with the sober acknowledgement that with humanity came sin, and with sin came death. These are the words a priest utters as he smears a cross of ashes onto his congregant’s forehead during an Ash Wednesday service. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
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