Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved our neighbor …
Last week we celebrated Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of the Lenten season. I love these 40 days as they march toward Easter. It happened that Ash Wednesday fell on my birthday — a new year for me. Also, it’s the day Sam asked me to marry him. It was a fitting day to remember and evaluate the past while beginning afresh a new life together.
Oh yes, there is much to be glad about this season. Flowers bloom, grass greens, redbuds flower, birds sing in the mornings, the kittens frolic chasing bugs that only they can see.
Wikipedia gives a basic history of Ash Wednesday being the 40 days before Easter, Sundays are not included. In early times, it was a time of fasting. Ashes were used to represent mourning and grief, such as Job sitting in ashes and sackcloth.
The ashes for Ash Wednesday come from burning palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter). In modern times the minister or priest will dip his/her finger in the ashes and make a cross on the participant’s forehead as a public sign of repentance.
The minister says, “Remember that you are but dust, and to dust you will return,” or “Repent and believe the Gospel,” a later version.
Church records describe the ceremony as early as the eighth century, but by the 1600s the disposition of ashes had fallen out of favor in the Anglican world. By the 19th century many western Christians, particularly the Protestant Episcopal Church, began observing Ash Wednesday as a public display of the “confession of sin and seeking God’s mercy and grace.”
The use of ashes is to remind worshipers of their sinfulness and mortality and the need to examine themselves and change their undesirable ways.
At the little white chapel in the Prairie the pastor used the Sunday prior to Ash Wednesday to describe behavioral situations to consider. This was not your usual list of lying, cheating, stealing, murdering; no, these were more akin to examining one’s face under florescent lighting and discovering tiny cracks, something I try to avoid. I asked him for the list:
When we get angry at our children, friends or a coworker.
When we buy something we don’t need or can’t afford.
When we sneak, thinking no one is looking, and scarf down another sugar donut.
When we hear about a friend’s vacation or good fortune, and we are mad instead of happy.
When we waste another night flipping channels.
When we spend too much time reading instead of doing things that need to get done.
When it dawns on us that we spend too much time talking about ourselves.
Really? An extra donut? Another new dress? One more episode of Andy Griffith when supper needs tending? My toes started to cramp until I became more grateful for mercy and grace, second chances, new beginnings and the promise of a coming Easter.
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