Dear Pittman Park family,
Here we are at the beginning of Lent. This season of the church year is intended to lead us on a forty day journey toward Easter by way of prayer, reflection, fasting and centering ourselves through scripture. All of this is toward the end of devoting ourselves more completely to Christ.
Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is a time for us to ponder not only our mortality but what it means to be alive in Christ. Participants in Ash Wednesday worship receive a smudge of ash in the form of a cross on their forehead. It is a somber moment in which we embrace the frailty of our lives – given and reclaimed by God. I treasure the words of Jan Richardson an artist, author, United Methodist minister, and director of The Wellspring Studio. Below you will find a poem of hers entitled, “A Blessing for Ash Wednesday”.
It is my prayer you will find new life in Christ on your Lenten journey this year! By the way, it is not too late to pick up one of the “Living Lent” devotional booklets. Look for one at the entrances to our worship spaces this Sunday. Interested in receiving it via email? Click here… “Living Lent” daily devotionals to have it delivered to your inbox.
Blessings to you during this holy season!
Bill
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
All those days you felt like dust,
like dirt, as if all you had to do
was turn your face toward the wind
and be scattered to the four corners
or swept away by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
Did you not know what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day we freely say we are scorched.
This is the hour we are marked
by what has made it through the burning.
This is the moment we ask for the blessing
that lives within the ancient ashes,
that makes its home inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked not for sorrow.
And let us be marked not for shame.
Let us be marked not for false humility
or for thinking we are less than we are
but for claiming what God can do
within the dust, within the dirt,
within the stuff of which the world is made,
and the stars that blaze in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral inside
the smudge we bear.