Today points to how it will be at the end of our living on earth. We return to what it is to be a child of God, to know ourselves treasured and of infinite worth to our Creator. We go back to before we tried to be God, and instead, simply get to be with God. We return to the beginning, before all the wrong choices, before all the hurtful things, and make a fresh start.
FROM DUST YOU CAME TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN FREE
It takes us back to how God would have us be: walking free in the evening breeze, delighting again in the intimacy of God’s love for us. We’re invited to turn away from all those things that consume so much of our energy – that are self-seeking, self-serving – and return to the life that is real life. I find it a tough message to hear, perhaps even dismal. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’ And so we hear again the words, ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And so, in that old story, God said to the human one, the one we call Adam, that life would be tough and tiring, ‘until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’īecause of that, we see the sign of dust and ashes all about us – of our failures of the hurts we inflict and the hurts we receive of our attempts to play God, of sidelining God and following our own path the ashes and dust that come when we no longer walk with God. That’s certainly how it is with me, and yes, I guess it’s like that for you too. But then we got above ourselves, and we began to play God, making wrong choices and having to wear the consequences. These words hark back to one of the great foundational myths from Genesis – a story that talks about how we came from God how God formed the first of us from the dust of the ground, and breathed life into us how in the beginning we were intimate and close with God how we walked free and uninhibited with our God. Whether we’re buried or cremated, we will become one again with the dust of the earth. The ashes we’re presented with today are a reminder that from the day that each of us was born we began to die. Though I have spoken them countless times, I cannot but think of my own mortality – of the fact, that one day I will die. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’Įarlier today, I stood before a coffin and uttered again the familiar words, ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’. We have come to have ashes marked on our foreheads in the sign of the cross and to hear again the words, ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Here we are, ready to start another Lent, another journey towards Easter.
0 kommentar(er)
