Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Today is a special day for many Christian traditions.  It's the first day of the season known as Lent.  This day has traditionally been called Ash Wednesday.

So what is significant about this day?  Well, a number of things, actually.  Lent is a season based upon the 40 days of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert (see Bible readings such as Matthew 4), and echoes the forty years where Israel wandered in the wilderness due to their unbelief (see Numbers 13 and 14).  If you count back from Easter 40 days (not including Sundays, which are found "in" Lent, but do not belong to the season), you come to today.  The starting point of the season of Lent is always a Wednesday, which has become known as Ash Wednesday.

This holy day is one in which we remember that the cross of Jesus is the price of sin.  We also are reminded that God is a consuming fire, who refines us as He burns away the bad and evil, which then purifies the good.  We see a very clear picture of this in Malachi chapters 3 and 4, where we hear of God as a refining fire who burns away the stubble, that what is good may remain and be pure.  Hence, we have the name Ash Wednesday, remembering that our sins are as ashes as we face God's purifying fire.

The good news is, God has completely burned away our sins in Jesus and the cross.  Our sins have been reduced to ashes, and God makes us clean and pure through our belief that Jesus has done this for us.  So today, as a reminder of that, many Christians will attend worship times at their local churches, where they receive a cross of ashes upon their foreheads as a reminder that they have been forgiven, and their sin is like ash because of Jesus.

So if you see someone today with a cross of ashes on their foreheads, you now know the meaning and significance of such a thing.  My prayer is that all of us may know Christ's forgiveness through the cross, and that all our sins may be as ashes in the sight of God.