During this month of March, we move into the season in the church year we call Lent. These are the days leading up to Easter, mirroring the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness. We begin the season by remembering that we were made from dust, and to dust, we shall return. We take time to see how life is and the world as it is – as we all journey with Jesus on a downward slope toward the cross.
These forty days, not counting Sundays, were originally a time of fasting and penance as new converts prepared for holy baptism. Eventually, this became a time for all Christians to focus on their relationship with God, grow as disciples, and extend themselves.
We read Psalm 51 on Ash Wednesday as we reflect on this time of cleansing, baptism, and looking closely at our lives and our relationship with God:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin...
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.
These are some of my favorite words from scripture, reminding me that our Creator also restores us. Barbara Brown Taylor offers this perspective on Lent:
“Like our urge to clean house in the spring, the church also recognized a need for a spiritual spring cleaning. It offered ‘forty days to cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone – to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply ourselves‘” (my emphasis). She says offering the image of dust on Ash Wednesday is not revolutionary. We place ashes on the forehead, and as we remember, we will return to dust. And then she says, “Dust can come from lack of use, or dust can come from construction. Dust that accumulates from lack of use is a symbol of an unexamined faith life. It is faith as an obligation or as a social norm. It is remaining in that place of spiritual comfort. Construction dust is present as you consent to God’s work on you and through you. It is the consequence of a faithful struggle – of new square footage being added.”
I pray we will accept the challenge to struggle together faithfully as God works on us, in us, and through us this Lenten season. May we find ourselves dusty daily as God’s work—and our meeting God in that work—is evident in our very lives! Amen.
