Surrendering Ashes

Lent. A seldom reflection of mortality. 

When the body of Christ comes together to remember and reflectively absorb our inevitable mortality.

From an outsider looking in, Ash Wednesday has to be a confusing practice of the church. Placing ashes on foreheads with the soft spoken words, "From dust you came and to dust you shall return." A worship service completely dedicated to our inevitability of death. In a world that is so infested with death, we tend to find a way to avoid it in our daily living. We have a remarkable ability to distract ourselves from our mortality.

But when we face our mortality, we face heaven.

Ash Wednesday encourages us to swallow the bitter taste of our mortality without lusting over the fleeting pleasures of our temporary earthly life. Rather, it allows me to acknowledge heaven by acknowledging death.

The season of Lent calls us to die to our earthly life and surrender to our heavenly one. It requires the uncomfortably true realization and acceptance of our earthly death and nature. It is a season of surrender - something I constantly need in my life. Lent is one huge, beautiful surrender.

In this surrender, we give the burden of our earthly life to Jesus. We give Him our losses, our gains, our dreams, our talents, our love, and our death. As Christians, we are called to make this surrender every day. We are called to give Him our all. For me, this has been the biggest challenge of my faith - to give my all to Christ. 

Lent challenges the Christian with the fact that we are called to surrender, yet unable to completely do so. Which is where grace comes in. Jesus’s living and resurrected death fulfills our calling as children of God. 

What a beautiful surrender. To give up your own son. To give up your own life. All for mankind’s inability to surrender to God’s righteousness. 

Lent prepares us for Easter by giving us an opportunity to surrender and the realization that we are incapable of completely surrendering. Easter celebrates the great victory of Jesus’s surrender which then becomes our own. 

May your Lent be filled with the beautiful and humbling attempt of surrender. By accepting our death and inability to surrender, may we acknowledge our heavenly calling. As we reflect on our mortality and human nature, I pray we give grace the last word. 

A surrender with God begins in ashes and ends in life.