If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered: What’s so significant about putting ashes on our foreheads to mark the beginning of Lent? Without an understanding of its purpose, it can feel like an empty tradition—a liturgical formality with little meaning for modern-day Christians.
In truth, Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are not empty rituals but Jesus-centered practices that invite us to slow down, step outside the distractions of our busy lives, and intentionally draw closer to Christ. Ash Wednesday, in particular, brings us face-to-face with a profound truth: we are dust.
An Invitation To Pause
At Grace, our 30-minute Ash Wednesday service offers an opportunity to pause, reflect, repent, and embrace the transformation that Jesus offers. The ashes we receive on our foreheads remind us of our mortality—“From dust we came, and to dust we shall return” (Genesis 3:19). Rather than being an empty act, the ashes call us to reflect on our humble beginnings, our frailty, and our dependence on God’s grace. Ash Wednesday is a perfect picture of our house rule of Modern Liturgy in action. It connects us to timeless traditions, inviting us to experience God’s grace and transformation that has shaped Christians for centuries while meeting us right where we are today.
From Dust to Life
Ash Wednesday is not just about remembering our mortality. It’s also about reflecting on the deeper truth that, as the prophet Isaiah says, we are “the work of God’s hands” (Isaiah 64:8). Though we are made from dust, God continues to shape and reform us. Though we are finite, God loves us in our humanity and calls us to grow, to change, to become more like Him.
In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul writes: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” Lent calls us to face our weaknesses and invite God’s power to transform us. It’s a time of both reflection and action, as we move toward renewal, toward transformation, toward Christ. How kind of God to not leave us in our frail state but to invite us into something more.
From Death to Resurrection
Each step of repentance, each moment of prayer, and each act of self-denial during these 40 days of Lent is part of a deeper process of restoration, leading us to Easter’s celebration of redemption. What begins with dust on Ash Wednesday ends with resurrection on Easter Sunday, as we experience the new life Christ offers through His victory over death.
A Season of Becoming
The ashes on our foreheads are not just a reminder of who we are but also of who we are becoming through God’s transformative work. This season, may we surrender fully to this process of renewal, allowing God to transform every area of our lives, and echoing the prayer of David in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
