Lent

God has many faces.  Many faces that I witnessed walking up to the Alter this morning to get marked with ash.  The ash that represents our sins, our failures, our mistakes.  The ash that reminds us that “from dust we were created, and to dust we shall return.”  The ash that fills our hearts and pushes God out.  The ash that is to be washed away.

This time of Lent is a time to focus.  A time to bring God to the center, a time to cleanse our hearts and make them whole.  Something that only God can do.

            “Lent is our season of preparation work.

                        It is our time to spend with God,

                        scraping away all that is false and unhealthy,

                        allowing God’s light to shine into our wounds,

                        the gaping holes in our lives,

                        the cracks we try to hide.

                        And in that process,

                        God prepares us to receive a love

                        that will make us new.

                        God prepares us

                        for the bright and shining light of Easter morning.

                        God gives us new life.”

                                    EXCERPT FROM A POEM BY TORI HICKS

Though a solemn day, it is one filled with hope.  Hope for everlasting love and purity.  Hope the wonderment of God working in our lives.  It’s exhilarating, revitalizing, invigorating. 

“Fall slow tears and drown all my doubts and fears
And wash away my sin and shame in the flood of forgiveness and mercy.
Weep, sad eyes; my soul in repentance cries.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit with in me.
Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
Take all my iniquities upon You.
Have mercy on me, have mercy on me.”

Come, now is the time.  It is our calling to take up the cross and walk in Jesus’ name.  Remembering the suffering and pain, yet filled with love and peace.

“So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.  For he says, ‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’  See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!  We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.  We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see – we are alive; as punished, and not yet killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

            2 CORINTHIANS 5:20 – 6:10