The dust is a powerful symbol of our humble beginnings and our humble end: “ For dust you are,” says the Lord, “and to dust you shall return.” The ashes stoke up in our memory the Old Testament practice of repenting with dust and ashes. “It is a curious thing,” mused poet Malcolm Guite, “that we should use ash as a sign of repentance and renewal.”įor over a thousand years, on Ash Wednesday, Christians have attended a service of repentance and renewal to mark the start of Lent that consists of a time of prayer, lament, confession, and the imposition of ashes in the form of a cross on one’s forehead.īut, in our self-absorbed culture where our clothes, hairstyles, and skin routine communicates our worth and status, Ash Wednesday and the gawkish ashen crosses speak a different kind of set-apart life, a cruciform life-one that is found in and through death and radical humility.
