Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Ash Wednesday
Genesis 3:19 "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
REMEMBER YOU ARE DUST
Pride is the mother of all sins for it is the sin against the mother of all commandments (You shall have no other gods before me). We find its trail of wreckage throughout human history. Eve was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit because she wanted to be like God. Jesus' disciples argued over who would be the greatest. Hitler's pride in a so-called Aryan race led to the great holocaust. When man gets an inflated sense of his own importance and power, only trouble can follow.
Today is Ash Wednesday and on this day we are reminded of what God told Adam: "Dust you are and to dust you will return." The ashes say to us, "You are only mortal. You are not God. Remember where you came from and do not be proud." By extension, ashes have come to be a symbol of sorrow over sin. Sitting in sackcloth and ashes as Daniel did (Dan 9:3) was a sign that he remembered he was dust--that he saw himself as but a poor sinner approaching a holy God.
As we enter the season of Lent in which we again ponder the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus, let us remember that we are dust. We do not want to turn away from Christ in pride, thinking that we can do well enough without Him. We do not want to excuse our guilt through a careless attitude toward it. We rather acknowledge that we are indeed frail sinners who desperately need our Savior's cleansing--a cleansing He graciously gives us by His atoning sacrifice on Calvary.
We remember we are dust, and that is good. Even better: HE remembers we are dust--and in mercy does for us what we could never do for ourselves.
