Ashes to Ashes…

***In addition to my Ash Wednesday reflection below, here’s some beautiful thoughts written by my wonderful husband***

This essay started out as my own reflection on Lenten observance, but now that I’ve read my wife’s excellent post, I have reshaped some of the things I originally wrote.  Most of my best ideas spring from the conversations that we share, so it only seems natural to develop this post as an extended open conversation between us.

 

My wife and I have been trying to become more Sabbath-centered.  That is, we have been attempting to set aside a day for the Lord, to rest, to reconnect, to deepen our awareness of God’s presence in our lives, and to put ourselves in rhythm with God’s time.  As an extension of that Sabbath focus, we have also been thinking about Lent as a time to create a space for God. 

 

There is an elegance to the structure of Lent.  We begin Lent with Ash Wednesday, when we bear the mark of the dust from which we were formed.  We end Lent at the cusp of Easter Sunday, dwelling in the mystery and awe of Christ’s Passion.  In between ,we set aside 40 days out of the year, and in so doing, we tithe our very lives.  The point of any tithe is a Biblical recognition of the sovereignty of God–a physical reminder that we do not possess what we hold and a tangible confession that God is the source of all things.  By tithing 40 days each year of our lives, we proclaim to God that our lives are not our own, that we belong solely to God and that we depend entirely on God.

 

How we choose to tithe our time is very important.  The two principles that should guide us are displacement and connection.  In Lent, we are invited to break the routine of our lives, to change our habits, to continually remind ourselves that this time is different.  But what we are really being asked to do is to take ourselves out of our comfort zones.  By displacing ourselves, we create opportunities to encounter God.  Just as Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, so too are we pulled by the Holy Spirit to a place that strips away all of the things we use to convince ourselves that we are safe and self-reliant.  

 

But how can we encounter God in that emptiness and displacement?  That is where the principle of connection should guide us.  So often, people focus on self-sacrifice during Lent, specifically physical denial: fasting, abstaining from certain foods, etc.  These things can only lead us to a true encounter with God if they take us outside of ourselves and connect us with others.  We should let our hunger from fasting put us in solidarity with the hungry of the world; our suffering should serve to open our eyes to the tremendous suffering of people everywhere; our self-denial should make us aware of the fact that we have the luxury of choosing to deny ourselves while so many others are denied the basic necessities of life.

 

Guided by these two principles, we should each pray and discern the best way to take ourselves out of our comfort zones and to reconnect with our brothers and sisters and with our God.  And remember that sacrifice is not the same as suffering.  Find something that makes you uncomfortable, while at the same time puts you in communion with others.  Use your imagination.  It can be taking on a new responsibilty or commitment that requires more of yourself than you would normally give.  If you have an extremely busy schedule, setting aside time for quiet prayer and contemplation may be the most difficult thing you can do; but it can be a unique opportunity for you to step into discomfort while making spiritual connections.  You can even deny yourself food or drink or cigarettes, but try to seek ways to connect–take on the added discomfort of calculating how much money you saved and donate it to a worthy cause; turn every hunger pang into a call to prayer and mindfulness; use your temporary discomfort to gain greater awareness of your blessings and your obligation towards those who are not similarly blessed.

 

The best thing that we can do in our Lenten observance is to use it to shape the rest of our lives.  In tithing one’s money or possessions, God is very clear that we are still expected to behave righteously and justly with the rest of it.  In the same way, we do not set aside the season of Lent only to do what we want with the rest of our year.  Rather, we must take the invitation of Lenten sacrifice and the reminder of God’s sovereignty as a guiding principle to the rest of our lives, and thank God for the blessing of an annual renewal.