Ash Wednesday blessings

Dear Friends,

This week we begin our 40-day journey from ash to cross to life everlasting. The season of Lent this year comes to us when we are hopefully somewhere just passed the midpoint of our pandemic; it is also midway through this year’s Lent when we will mark the first anniversary of our quarantine. The journey from ash to cross to life everlasting is one each of us know deep in our bones these days. This journey is one we have walked together.

“And yet even now,” calls the prophet Joel, we are invited to return to the Lord, our God. Our God invites us to turn again to the way of faith, the way of love. “Out of the depths,” the psalmist cries, “unto you, O God.” How many of us have felt those depths ourselves this year? How have our own cries been heard by our God who listens to the very beating of our hearts.

Lent is a season of depth and of return: of deep faith and of returning to walk with Jesus trusting that there is nowhere we can go where God has not gone before. Let this sink in. Let Lent sink in. From ash to cross to life everlasting, God is with you. In the ashes of our daily lives, in the crosses each of us bear, in the life and life eternal promised, God is here.

May the blessings of ash be upon you as surely as the promise of resurrection is for you. A very blessed Ash Wednesday to each of you.

In faith,

Pastor Will