We've Got to Try

It's gray and gloomy outside today because of course it is. Throughout the day, many of us will slide into a church pew and hear some variation on these words:

"You are dust and to dust you shall return."

There is harshness there. It's a slap of reality to the face and its hand is cold and brittle. We don't like to think of not being here. Our entire frame of reference is being alive. We may understand that death creeps around some unknown corner, but we don't really like to dwell on it. Well, poets might. Yet on the whole, humanity does not like being reminded of its finite nature.

On one hand--and I certainly understand why it strikes people this way--it is enough to make one want to burrow into a cocoon of despair. If we are merely dust, this jumble of atoms whirling around for but a blink of an eye, then what's the point?

It's gray and gloomy outside today because of course it is. Right before I started writing this, news broke of another school shooting in Florida. On a website, there is a picture of a woman crying; an ash cross on her forehead. My eyes are welling up just thinking about the image. Thinking about her heartbreak, thinking about what would happen if it were one of my sons or one of our youth at church. Dust. All of it dust and it only takes the snorting and stewing of one person to blow it all away. That cocoon of despair looks incredibly inviting.

But Lent is not just a time of remembering that we are fallen, broken, finite people. It is a time to remember Jesus who knew all of this about us. He knew we were dust. He knew about the monsters and men who snort and shout and snuff out the life in others. And he set his face towards laying down his life for the sake of others. Why? Because he loved. Because he loves.

And so we've got to try. Yes, we are dust. Yes, we are screwed up. But we've got to try and set our faces towards love. The other words you often hear on Ash Wednesday are "Repent and believe the gospel." Turn from paths of destruction and lies that kick dust up in the air. Turn. Begin again and again and again if you have have to. Believe that God's love is bigger. Believe that the hope which Jesus brings, which is to be our focus at this time, has the final say.

Yes, we are dust, which means we have this one shot. We can't waste it. It's gray and gloomy today. It doesn't have to be. We've got to try.