Ash Wednesday: The Dirt Doesn’t Lie

“For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” — Genesis 3:19

Via TJC

Today, millions in the faith will walk into a church and let someone mark their forehead with ash: A cross made of dirt. A priest or pastor will say the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

This is perhaps the most honest thing the Church does all year.

There will be no hype or lights or worship band. There will be no three-point sermon with a clever acronym. There will be the dirt on skin and a reminder that we die to this world: literally. 

You Know You’re Dust

You feel it when your back goes out lifting something you used to lift without thinking or look in the mirror and see your father staring back. When you realize you’ve been working sixty-hour weeks to build a kingdom that won’t remember your name six months after you’re gone.

The Ash is Permission to Stop Performing

We are trained to perform. There is performance at work so they think we have it together. There is performance at church so they think we are spiritual. Sometimes we perform at home so our wives don’t see that we are worried or afraid. 

Ash Wednesday says: stop. The ash on your forehead is permission to admit you’re not enough, and that you’re broken. You need Jesus Christ, who is the way and the truth and the life. 

Something Has to Die

Lent is forty days of letting something die. We may be holding onto things that are killing us: Comfort. Control. The images we’ve built. The grudges we’ve nursed or the patterns we keep repeating. Something in you has to die so something better can grow. You know what it is. 

The Ash is War Paint

Lent doesn’t end with ash, but with resurrection. We don’t get to Easter without the cross. We don’t get a new life without death to ourselves. The ash is a declaration. It says: No more pretending or running. I’m dust, and I’m handing my life back to the One who made me from dust in the first place. 

The Ash is a mark of war. We are fighting for our souls, our families, and to become the men God called us to be instead of the image that the world asks us to maintain. 

Battle Order

Want to participate in Ash Wednesday? Things you could do:

• Get the ash. Find a church doing Ash Wednesday services and go. 

• Name what needs to die. Write it down. The habit. The pride. The bitterness. The thing you’ve been protecting that’s killing you. Be specific.

• Confess it to one person. Your wife. A brother. A pastor. Say it out loud: “I need to let this go and I can’t do it alone.”

• Fast from something for the next forty days. Not to impress God, but to practice letting go. Every time you feel the absence, pray: “Create in me a clean heart.”

The physical form is dust. That’s the truth. But dust is what God used to make the the form of the first man. And it’s what He’ll use to remake you.

Prayer

Father, we confess we’ve been living like we have forever. Forgive us for the performances, the pride, the refusal to admit we’re dust. Strip away what needs to die. Remake us into men who live honestly, love fiercely, and follow hard after You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.