“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

That’s the liturgical phrase we use today as we impose ashes on the heads of those who come commemorating this first day of Lent. Our church is joining other Methodists in our community (representing three separate Wesleyan denominations) for a combined evening service. While some clergy may modify this a bit, I tend to just stick to the script.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is that easy … and yet it is so hard.

I have a hard time saying it to small children whose entire lives are in front of them. “I know you don’t understand it now, but you will die one day.” Who says that to a child? It just seems cruel … even more so when the child is suffering from terminal illness or childhood trauma. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I have a hard time saying it to people in the middle of their lives. It feels like I am trying to put the paddles on a healthy, beating heart. As a young parent, I was horrified at the thought that either of the parents of our children might die too soon. Yet we experienced that horrible reality that struck our family with the untimely death of our own son-in-law.

When a person in the middle of a vivacious life is struck by bad news or a hard diagnosis, I really hate looking at them and saying, “Yes, it is true. Life sometime ends way too soon for people. You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

My heart breaks when a person in advanced years … someone who knows that the vast majority of their lives are behind them … comes to receive the ashes, and I remind them that their time is closer than they would hope it to be.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Hopefully, you have continued reading to this point … because there is a truth that needs to be spoken here. This is where our human condition encounters the good news of our faith.

You see, it is in the dirt … in the dust or clay … that God creates.

The good news, you see, is that God is all about dirt. The song, Control, by Tenth Avenue North … a song we sometimes sing in our contemporary service … asks me to “take my hands off my life and the way I think it should go.”

When we let go of our lives and yield to the reality that we are finally made of dust and dust is where we return, then we find ourselves on a journey of descent. A journey the mystics tell us is the way of wisdom.

Genesis 2:7 reads, “So God fashioned an earth creature out of the clay of the earth, and blew into its nostrils the breath of life. And the earth creature became a living human being.” (adapted from The Inclusive Bible). We are people of dust, and when we forget from whence we came, that’s when life goes awry.

It is what it means to be human … to practice humility … to be born of the humus. You see, it is in the dirt … in the dust or clay … that God creates. When we have these ashes imposed on our head, my challenge to you is to invite God to take what is right there … just above your eyes and the very real you underneath those ashes … to again create … to create anew!

May this season be a journey of descent … to the core of who we are … and to the very real need we have for God to do a new thing in us!

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return!”