Dust and Ashes on This Wednesday.

I turned to the Lord God

and pleaded 

in prayer and petition, in fasting,

and in sackcloth and ashes.

— Daniel 9:3

Today someone in the church I serve will mark my forehead with ashes.

In the shape of the Cross of Christ.

And they’ll tell me, “You are dust, and to the dust you shall return.”

Then it’s my pastoral responsibility to do that to them (or is it “do that for them”?) and tell them, “You are dust, and to the dust you shall return.”

And then I’ll do the same with everyone else there. Some young, some old; some healthy, some battling horrible heath conditions; some happy, some desolate.

Every year these moments wreck me.

But there has always come a moment, as we’re singing our final song in that Service of Divine Worship, that I look over the people with whom God has  blessed me but also entrusted to me as their pastor, and I see that we’re all covered with the Cross of Christ.

And a smile in my heart joins the tears I’ve been fighting.