For me, one of the most moving worship services each year is the Ash Wednesday service. This year Clark read the "Invitation to the Observance of Lenten Discipline" and I heard with new ears the invitation, "I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to observe a holy Lent: by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word." I try to use the season of Lent like society as a whole uses New Year's resolutions. However, unlike resolutions, it's not really me trying to get myself thinner, healthier, etc., but it is a time to allow God to get me right. What discipline can I use to allow God more access to me? The Ash Wednesday service helps me "to make a right beginning of repentance."
Another powerful aspect of the service for me is the imposition of ashes. The United Methodist Book of Worship describes Ash Wednesday as "a dual encounter: we confront our own mortality and confess our sin before God within the community of faith." It's that mortality thing that really gets me during the service. As I stand there and make a cross with the ashes on each person's forehead, as I say, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," as I especailly try to do this with little children, I want to say, "but not yet."
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, but not yet."
Yet, there is no guarantee. For some, whom I've seen "walk through the valley of the shadow" and come out (sometimes miraculously) on the other side, it is a celebration to think, "but not yet!" For others I know the time is approaching quickly. The tornadoes of Tuesday, just as the service of Ash Wednesday, remind us that there is no "but not yet." At any time, the words I use might come from the "Service of Committal".
"This body we commit to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
BIT: May this Lent lead us all to live each day with the thought of ashes.
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