![]() The ashes represent humanity’s collective and individual sins that blaze in a conflagration of destruction, leaving selves, families, forests, and cities in a heap of ash.In Scripture, when someone repents with dust and ashes, they are at the lowest point of their lives-absolute rock bottom-a moment of destitution and desperation, but repentance marks a turning point. The dust is a powerful symbol of our humble beginnings and our humble end: “ For dust you are,” says the Lord, “and to dust you shall return.” ![]() The ashes stoke up in our memory the Old Testament practice of repenting with dust and ashes. “It is a curious thing,” mused poet Malcolm Guite, “that we should use ash as a sign of repentance and renewal.”įor over a thousand years, on Ash Wednesday, Christians have attended a service of repentance and renewal to mark the start of Lent that consists of a time of prayer, lament, confession, and the imposition of ashes in the form of a cross on one’s forehead.īut, in our self-absorbed culture where our clothes, hairstyles, and skin routine communicates our worth and status, Ash Wednesday and the gawkish ashen crosses speak a different kind of set-apart life, a cruciform life-one that is found in and through death and radical humility. ![]()
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