Lenten Meditation: Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. (Matthew 6:20)
I invite you to remember today that you are invited to orient yourself to this life that intentionally recalls God’s love for the gorgeous you and this gorgeous creation. There is a practice of recalling God’s intention, the reign of God, heaven, to orient yourself to your life and your place in the grand scheme of God’s imagination for all creation. Daily prayer, guided by the prayerbook or a similar resource, roots us in stillness, praise, lament, and supplication – bringing us back to who we are in God. Acts of kindness and justice rooting us in our Christ like power are the currency of treasures in the reign of God.
Today is a day to remember of who you really are, and today is a day to remember what holds you down. What holds us down. What has hurt us. What oppresses. What despises. What imprisons. What drives shame. What despises the earth.
For Christians, our earliest poem of why we are here is the first chapter of Genesis which says that unlike everything else created by the Word of God, except the waters, we humans are earth creatures, made of the dirt, Ha-Adam is the Hebrew for the first creature.
Of the dirt do we come and to the dirt do we return, filled with the animating glory of God for our living. A glorious story that produces your glory – may everything that distances you from that glory, be to you like dust under your feet, the ash of your holy work today.