Ashes
Ash Wednesday starts the season of Lent where we are reminded that we will be returned to the ground. “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes” and it is our life in between where the fight for our soul occurs.
It can become clearer experiencing an Ash Wednesday service when the ashes are put on the forehead in the shape of a cross. Death is waiting and this is implicit in a season of penance. The whole Christian experience has proven that one has to allow the soul to die to them selves if they are going to live in Christ. This is where so many progressive Christians drop by the wayside. “What, Christian’s have to sacrifice?” This time of ashes is the forty days in the wilderness where God speaks and we shouldn’t. He has the right to remind us what He did for us on a cross and we have the obligation to try not to look away at His crucifixion and His call to take up our own.
Christian life can not be understood without Christian death. This season of ashes doesn’t validate a Christian faith as morbid, but on the contrary it is a faith that understands it has its’ climax in the rising only after it has its’ death. This is one of the key problems with and lack of power in progressive Christianity that refuses self-denial. It is only through our death that we get to our life; there are no spiritual short cuts. The Christian realization of life and death with in our soul should humble us to the core. We are dangerous; to ourselves and to both camps. All of humanity walks the edge where death and life can overtake in an instant. Ashes on the forehead are put there to help remind us to allow a reverence to sink within our soul.
These forty days in a death wilderness is where we more profoundly learn just what it means to take up our cross and hang there next to our Savior. It is painful, but it also is what perfects the Christian by permitting its’ own death. A fantastic King’s ransom has been paid for our life; the Prince was required. Ashes are just a manifestation of Christendom realizing it and trying not to look away.
Ash Wednesday starts the season of Lent where we are reminded that we will be returned to the ground. “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes” and it is our life in between where the fight for our soul occurs.
It can become clearer experiencing an Ash Wednesday service when the ashes are put on the forehead in the shape of a cross. Death is waiting and this is implicit in a season of penance. The whole Christian experience has proven that one has to allow the soul to die to them selves if they are going to live in Christ. This is where so many progressive Christians drop by the wayside. “What, Christian’s have to sacrifice?” This time of ashes is the forty days in the wilderness where God speaks and we shouldn’t. He has the right to remind us what He did for us on a cross and we have the obligation to try not to look away at His crucifixion and His call to take up our own.
Christian life can not be understood without Christian death. This season of ashes doesn’t validate a Christian faith as morbid, but on the contrary it is a faith that understands it has its’ climax in the rising only after it has its’ death. This is one of the key problems with and lack of power in progressive Christianity that refuses self-denial. It is only through our death that we get to our life; there are no spiritual short cuts. The Christian realization of life and death with in our soul should humble us to the core. We are dangerous; to ourselves and to both camps. All of humanity walks the edge where death and life can overtake in an instant. Ashes on the forehead are put there to help remind us to allow a reverence to sink within our soul.
These forty days in a death wilderness is where we more profoundly learn just what it means to take up our cross and hang there next to our Savior. It is painful, but it also is what perfects the Christian by permitting its’ own death. A fantastic King’s ransom has been paid for our life; the Prince was required. Ashes are just a manifestation of Christendom realizing it and trying not to look away.
posted by Kenneth W. Michael | 10:19 AM
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