I Survived Ash Wednesday

I wasn’t looking forward to today. Something about touching the foreheads of lots of old people with ashes just isn’t my idea of a good time. Such is the life of a hospital/nursing home chaplain. But that aside, I’d just like to draw your attention for a second to the multisensory experience of the imposition of ashes. We feel the ashes being smeared on our foreheads, we see it on the foreheads of others, we hear the words of Genesis 3:19 “Dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

For me, though, the big deal isn’t the ashes. It’s the washing of the ashes off. Personally I cannot stand walking around with the ash on my forehead. I feel like I’m trying to draw attention to myself. I feel like the Pharisee who was going around thanking God that he is better than others. So I washed my ashes off after about 10 minutes. Why? Because I am forgiven. I knew, in my heart, that today was not the day that I needed to remind myself of guilt or finitude. God knows there are enough things in my life that remind me how short I fall of living up to His holiness.

I guess it was also hard today for me on at least one other count. This woman I’ve been visiting weekly, she’s 83 and a life-long Lutheran, and has cancer. When I stopped by to say hello, she was lying on her side with one leg half-hanging out of her bed. This is unusual. She’s usually either sitting in bed or sitting up straight and properly. She told me she was very tired, and even though she said she was okay to talk her eyes kept shutting. For the few minutes that I stayed and talked to her about her being tired and feeling sick, I got a very strong reminder that she may be very near to death. It challenged my own feelings of mortality. “Dust you are, and to dust you will return.”

So today I focused on my baptism. July 16, 1978 was when I got saved. And from that point on, it’s like the words of that John Mayer song…”I’m bigger than my body gives me credit for…” I have the spirit of God living in me. I have that life.

I also finished up the day at work by talking to a girl at the reception desk. I ended up finding out that she has only been living in St. Louis for the last 8 months or so, and she’s still not connected with many other people her age. So I decided to invite her to my small group. Time will tell where that goes, but I was excited to have that opportunity. “Dust you are, and to dust you will return.” But there’s a lot we can do before we go back.