I’ve always loved this day in the church calendar. I think it’s because it feels so honest to me. For one day a year, we in the church community truly drop the mask (or have it ripped out of our hands) and acknowledge just how broken, needy and finite we are. It’s not a comfortable day, but that may also be why I love it. It challenges me and all my attempts to be in control. I can do everything I can do – I can speak all the right words, muster all the faith I can, do all the right actions (of course I read my Bible on Ash Wednesday – of course I begin my Lenten practice today) and still… when one of my colleagues smears the ash (made from the burned palm branches of last year’s celebration, when we proclaimed Jesus as King, not really knowing what it was we were doing)… oh my. When the ash is smeared on my forehead in the shape of a cross, and those soul shaking words are whispered in my ear, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Repent and believe the good news.” Wow. It sucks my breath right out of my lungs.

No matter how hard I try. No matter how good or bad I am. No matter how much I love and how fervently I hold on. I am dust. I have limits. I can go this far but no further.

Face to face with that impossibly hard truth, I stop talking. I stop striving. I stop pretending. I stop hiding. For the first time in awhile (since last year on Ash Wednesday, probably), I just am.

Naked. Vulnerable. Frightened. Needy.

And it’s there… shivering in that reality, that the second part of the eternal truth sinks in again. Repent (turn around) and believe the good news. And what is the good news?

I – we – belong to God. God is so crazy in love with us finite, limited, frightened, needy people that God entered into flesh. God came closer then the breath we have no control over, and God broke through the limits. Even death could not stop God.

It’s only when I realize how deep my need is that I am able to rest in how much deeper God’s love is.

I am dust, but I am God’s dust. You are dust, but you are God’s dust. We are God’s beloved children. And today, as the ash is smeared on our foreheads, we are reminded that we can stop striving, we can stop pretending. God already loves us wildly, so let’s just be who we already are… we are God’s beloved. Just as we are, ash and all. Brave up and hero on, my friends.