We encourage you to sign up for the 40-40-40 Lenten Challenge, a challenge with our partner Southeastern Iowa Synod to participate in Lenten practices, including these daily devotions. Just signing up counts as participation! More info here.

Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return…

Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return…

Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return…

These words, though often spoken quietly and reverently, often seem to resonate through the sanctuary, echoing with the heartbeats of those gathered. Even when ashes are imposed while standing on street corners or reaching through car windows the words resonate, a vibration pulsing with the reality we all do our best to avoid: everything and everyone dies. Often this is felt as deep grief, the very marrow of our bones mourning those we’ve loved and lost. It can live as fear and anxiety deep in our muscles as we worry about a future without those we love now.

Yet the gift of this day is the promise that even returned to dust, we and the world we love, are reconciled to God in Christ Jesus. Joined to his own cross of pain, suffering, and death, we rise with him in resurrection. It does not take away the grief or the pain or the fear. But it does invite the question: knowing that death cannot have the final say, how then will you live? And even more deeply, what would the church look like if we, together, lived as though we truly had nothing to lose? Perhaps this remembering our death is not about what we have to lose, but more about what it is that we have to gain in Christ and his love for us and the world.

Prayer

God, you call me from the ashes of death to live in the life of Christ.
Open my heart to listen to the voice of your Spirit. Give me courage to hear and boldness to act in those places you are revealing need to be changed. Broaden my imagination for what it means to be a disciple in your world, that I may more fully experience your love and grace. Amen.

Journal Prompt

Lent calls us to repentance, to turn from that which does not give life. This week I invite you to write or make a list of all that is getting in the way of you experiencing the fullness of life in Christ. What are those things in the congregation that no longer give life? Over the course of the week consider what God might be saying to you as you examine those things which hinder your experience of God’s life? What might God be calling you to let go, or leave behind, in order to create space for life?