The Journey of Lent - 2019

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From Biola University...the Lent Project.  Excerpt from today's entry:

"  "for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

Dust we are.

Dust – that ever-present and bothersome gritty waste that serves no purpose, it seems, than to muck up our furniture and floors. I came from dust, I constantly clean away the dust, and one day I will return to dust. That is the message of Ash Wednesday – Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: 
...Yet today is not just about our mortality but it is a day of repentance – Grant these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence…. God we have not loved you with our whole heart, mind and strength… We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves… We have been deaf to your call to serve… We have grieved your Holy Spirit… We confess our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives… We confess our self-indulgent appetites and ways… We confess our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts… We confess our negligence in prayer and worship, our failure to commend the faith that is in us, our blindness to human need and suffering, our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us….
Restore us, good Lord… Accomplish in us the work of your salvation.. Accept our repentance, O Lord."

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I can't say it any better. 

This mass of dust formed miraculously into a body, breathed into life by God Himself, declared as very good and His handiwork...I have marred and scarred it up with my destructive, sinful self.  SELF.  The problem.

On this day that provides the opportunity to directly- DIRECTLY - look at the reality of mySELF in the mirror of His perfection, may I- may we all-be struck motionless in awe by the truth that our despicable reality has hope.  Hope that we will not be obliterated from God in His disgust of us.  Ash Wednesday reminds us that that is what we deserve.  Actually, we deserve worse:  an eternity of never-ending punishment.  Ash Wednesday reminds us that when our body is done housing our soul for these earthly years, and that body decays back to dust, our soul and the essence of who we were created to be will stand before God Himself.  He will then decide for us if our eternity is in forever bliss with Him or in eternal torment and isolation away from Him. 
Ash Wednesday is an opportunity to allow our eyes to recognize our shame in His holy mirror, BUT also to allow Him in His great love to take us by the shoulders and turn us to see His Son Jesus.  The journey of Lent can daily help our eyes focus on Him, strengthen our faith and begin to see the miraculous transformation that occurs in how God views us through the lens of Jesus who was our atoning sacrifice.