By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19(NLT)
On
Ash Wednesday all over the land people flock to churches to have ministers take
ashes mixed with oil and smear it on their foreheads. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that we were
made from the stuff, and someday we’re going back to it.
It’s Important to Remember that we are dust…
Ashes are an ancient symbol of our humanity. In Genesis, we read that God formed human
beings out of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). The Hebrew word translated dust is
occasionally translated ashes elsewhere.
When Abraham felt the need to acknowledge the
difference between him, a human being, and the infinite God, he referred to
himself as dust and ashes. He said, I
who am but dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27).
It’s Important to Remember that to dust we shall return
Our
humanity also calls to mind our mortality.
After
expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the first human beings are told by God, “you
are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19 NRSV). We know the day is coming for each of us when
we will return to dust.
We
wear black as a sign of mourning. Ancient
people wore ashes. For example, a priest
named Mordecai puts on sackcloth and ashes to grieve the many deaths he sees
coming from an order King Ahasuerus gives to kill all Jewish people (Esther
4:1-3). The prophet Jeremiah later
calls the people of God to “roll in ashes” as a way of mourning the coming
devastation from an opposing army (Jeremiah 6:26).
Receiving
the imposition of ashes is a powerful way to confront our humanity and
mortality. They remind us that we are
not God, but God’s good creation. In these
ashes we recognize that our bodies will not last forever; we come face-to-face
with the reality of our eventual death.
It’s Important to Remember to Repent
Ashes
also signify our sorrow for the mistakes we have made. People in ancient times wore sackcloth and
ashes as a way of expressing their repentance of sins.
When
Jonah reluctantly preached to the people of Nineveh after the giant fish spit
him up on the beach, the King and his people put on sackcloth and sat in
ashes. God saw this act of repentance
and spared the people (Jonah 3:1-10).
In
the New Testament Jesus mentions this practice.
Warning the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida Jesus said,
if the miracles done among you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed their hearts and lives and put on funeral clothes and ashes a long time ago. (Matthew 11:21 CEB).
When
we participate in the service of ashes, we confront our sin. We recognize our inability to live up to all
God has created us to be, and our need to be forgiven. No matter how often we go to church, nor how
far we have come in our spiritual journeys, nor how accomplished we may feel,
each of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
The container holding ashes is called a Pyxis. Pyxis is a small and faint constellation in
the southern sky. Abbreviated from Pyxis
Nautica, its name is Latin for a mariner's compass. In Greek the word literally means “box”.[1]
The ashes are our life’s compass-points contained
in a box, reminding us of that from which we’ve come and that to which we are
going. It reminds us to repent,
remembering and rejecting the life that led us away from close fellowship with
God. It helps us remember the cost of
rising again from the dust and ashes!
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