We are now in the season of remembering that we are dust.
This reality is unfortunately all too easy to remember and all too difficult to forget –
for many reasons which now include the slow, steady, and devastating unfolding of war in Ukraine.
This season of Lent, we acknowledge our desperate need of a Savior
and give thanks for the answer to that need in a God Who holds nothing back.
We give thanks for the God Who enfleshes and enmeshes Godself
in the dusty grime of this world and chooses to shake nothing off.
Christ shakes nothing off, but instead carries it all to hell and back’s graveyard
where the voice of death is forever left without words to accuse, damn, or condemn.
The only words heard are breathed by the Living-Dying-Living-One.
Words first spoken in an unsuccessful tomb…
words of Life and words of Grace echoing for all eternity.
Yes, this is the season of remembering we are dust… AND that there is One
Who breathes Life’s breath into the ashy ruin of our lives
offering new words:
Forgiven, Saved, Beloved, Mine.
As a Lenten blessing, please receive these words from Jan Richardson:
Blessing the Dust
– For Ash Wednesday
All those days you felt
like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face toward the wind
and be scattered to the four corners
or swept away by the smallest breath
as insubstantial –
did you not know what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour we are marked
by what has made it through the burning.
This is the moment we ask for the blessing
that lives within the ancient ashes,
that makes its home inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked not for sorrow.
And let us be marked not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility or for thinking
we are less than we are
but for claiming what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge we bear.
- Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
Sharing the Lenten journey with you and thankful for you,
Dena
If you would like to view past editions of Grace for the Journey, follow this link: https://fairwaydistrictnc.org/category/from-the-ds/