Ash Wednesday

Today is meant to be a reminder of our mortality.

That's not something we really like, especially in our culture. We abhor aging and death. In fact, we'd rather not talk about it.

There are any number of products we can use, buy, try that attempt to keep us from realizing "the thousands natural shocks flesh is heir to", to quote Shakespeare.

As a culture, we've managed to convince ourselves that if we do things like
detox,
tighten our abs,
buy a juicer,
then we just might actually be able to avoid our mortality.

Doing those things may make us healthier (a very good thing), but they won't keep away the inevitable. We have to confront death in order to live life.

So tonight @ 7PM, we'll receive ashes on our foreheads with the words "from dust you came, to dust you will return." It will be a reminder that our lives are here for a brief moment. And that if our moment is to count in any real way, we need to be caught up in Something bigger than us. And in doing that, we'll again put our hope in the God who raises the dead.

Here are some sobering words from William Law in his 18th Century classic: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life . Try this tonight as you go to sleep:

Represent to your imagination that your bed is your grave; that all things are ready for your interment; that you are to have no more to do with this world; and that it will be owing to God's great mercy if you ever see the light of the sun again...Then commit yourself to sleep as one that is to have no more opportunities of doing good, but is to awake among spirits that are separate from the body and waiting for the judgment of the great last day.

Such solemn resignation of yourself into the hands of God every evening, and parting with all the world as if you were never to see it any more--and all this in the silence and darkness of night--is a practice that will soon have excellent effects upon your spirit. For this time of the night is exceeding proper for such prayers and meditations. The likeness which sleep and darkness have to death will contribute very much to make about it more deep and affecting.