Embracing the Dust
Ash Wednesday 2020
It's been two years. Two years since Ash Wednesday 2020 when I took this picture.
Little did I know how much Ash Wednesday would mark me, and all of us. That it would be the beginning of a journey of surrender. A journey of setting our face towards the Cross. Reminding us of the frailness of our humanity. Reminding us that we are indeed, dust.
There was something really grounding about going to an Ash Wednesday service. Something holy and sacred about the young and old, weak and strong all going up to receive ashes on their foreheads. We are all headed for the grave and there is no escape. There is a sobriety to this. From dust you were created and to dust you will return.
On Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are dust. That we are frail, that we are limited and that we are broken.
A Psalm for Ash Wednesday
The words of this Psalmist calls our attention as we anticipate the Cross,
“As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.”
Ok, let me just say it. I don't like this passage. I have a feeling if you’re honest, you don’t either.
I don’t like to be called dust.
I don’t like to be told that I’m so frail that I can be blown away with the wind.
It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel so dispensable, so – small. And I don’t like that. I’d much rather hear that I am significant. That my life has meaning. That I am capable of great things.
And actually, I am significant – but not for the reasons I thought.
But before we can get to that part, let’s come back to us being dust. The Psalmist says here that
God remembers how we are formed. Do we?
Many of us can get pretty busy making our own kingdoms, advancing and expanding, building and refining, on and on. We become our own gods, moving along in our unending agendas and long string of “have to’s” as though there is no end and no limit.
It’s usually not until we get sick, or watch someone we love pass away that we are met with our own fragility. And when we do – most of us get scared. We don’t like to face the fact that we could fall apart in an instant, and like the grass – be blown away.
But, I think the Psalmist is onto something – there is an invitation here in acknowledging that we are weak, if we are ready to listen. He says that the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. To fear God is to humbly admit that we are small and frail in comparison to the God of the universe. And the act of acknowledging this truth is the starting place from which His compassion flows.
But this forces us to face our weaknesses, which isn’t usually pleasant for most of us. Myself included.
Experiencing the Dust
A few years ago, I set out to take a prayer retreat. I had been up against some tough realities in ministry that I couldn’t control, though I tried. It left me feeling frustrated and helpless and I needed to step away. But when I set out to rest and be refreshed, I ended up battling depression all day - fighting an emotional slump that made it difficult to engage in prayer and receive what I had hoped.
I sensed the Lord urging me to get out and take a walk. “Maybe the fresh air will help brighten me up. Or a little exercise, so I can get back to the real stuff of receiving from God.”
I felt more like dust in that moment than I ever had. “Yes, Lord. I really am dust. I can’t do this,” I prayed.
Apathy, helplessness, restlessness, fear, frustration. That’s all I could feel. Part of me wondered if it was pregnancy hormones – but that frustrated me even more since it was out of my control. I prayed for God to take these feelings away. How could I expect to try to minister to people like this? How could I even engage with God like this?”
Receiving God’s Compassion in Our Humanity
It wasn’t until the end of the day, when I invited God to speak into my emotions, into my limitations, that the truth came out,
“Bette, even in your time trying to rest you’ve tried to control it into being something ‘productive.’ The way you’re feeling is just another reminder that you are dust, that I am God, and that there is very little you can control – even your own emotions. How then can you expect to control the actions of others in ministry?
In this frail moment, God had compassion on me by reminding me that I was dust. And this time it didn’t make me angry or afraid…it came as a relief.
“But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him…”
His word to me was this –
It is only in acknowledging that you are dust that you marvel at the mystery that I can take dust and breathe into it the breath of life. When you try to pretend you are not dust, you won’t receive what I have to offer you.
Stop Trying to Manage the Dust
Acknowledge it for what it is and open yourself to my invitation for you to be filled with something beyond yourself. Something eternal that takes the limits you have in your humanness and expands them into a form that contains unending life and breath.
These feelings you’ve been experiencing – helplessness, restlessness, fear, apathy, frustration…they are all a part of the process in recognizing your humanness. It is the outward expression of the truth that you are frail and limited.
What do we do when we feel our limitations? I’ve made the first two an accidental regular practice. Maybe you can relate.
Go to a dangerous place of bitterness, anger, or guilt at the truth of my limitations.
Try to control and manipulate my surroundings in response and try to be like god, but fail miserably at it – leading me deeper into helplessness, despair, guilt, anger, and bitterness.
OR Turn to God in the midst of my limitations, acknowledge them for what they are and allow Him to give me the eternal resources I need that go beyond your limitations – breath, life, light, power, love, freedom…
When we try to control our surroundings, we are in essence saying, “I got this, I have everything I need to fix it.” But when we stop, rest, and open ourselves to God and to the fact that we actually don’t “got this,” then He does. And He will demonstrate His power through you.
A Blessing
The Lord’s blessing and invitation to me in the midst of my limits was this. May you receive it as your own:
“I give grace to the humble.
I can only fill what is empty.
I can only heal the sick.
I can only breathe life within that which is breathless.
So be breathless, Bette.
Acknowledge that you are dust,
and only then will I, can I fill you.”
I mentioned before that I am significant – but not in the ways I thought. I thought that I was significant because of what I do. That’s what the world tells me anyway. And it’s telling you that too. But it is a lie. In reality, what I accomplish is often just stirring up more dust. I am not even significant because of who I am.
Our lives are worth only what God makes them – eternity within our humanity. He chose to fill us with His very breath, and that’s what makes us significant. The fact that “from everlasting to everlasting God’s love is with those who fear Him,” means that when we acknowledge our dust-ness, we allow ourselves to be filled with His love, with His breath, and in so doing we come alive. We live into the eternal parts of us. And we are then invited with Adam to join Him as co-inheritors of a beautiful kingdom in a beautiful story that we never deserved, but that goes on forever.
So let yourself be dust today by acknowledging your weakness. Today, look your own frailty in the face, and acknowledge it for what it is. And as you come before the living God as dust, kneeling before Him in humility and weakness, know that you invite Him to fill the weakest, most insignificant parts of yourself with beauty, life, and breath. And as He fills you, you are given eternal significance.
A Prayer
This was my prayer on Ash Wednesday last year, and I am now realizing how deeply this prayer was answered in my life and in our world. Let this be your prayer too.
Lord,
Here I find myself, my face set towards Jerusalem to find you there. I am yearning, aching, leaning towards You and longing nearness with my Crucified Lord.
So here I offer my ashes, Lord. It’s not much, but somehow it’s precious to you. I offer you my failings, my strivings, my sin. I offer you my limited, weak humanity that you so dearly love. I offer you my whole self - fractured and black like soot.
Here I am, Lord. Take me with you to Jerusalem, Jesus. Show me what it looks like to journey with you to the Cross. May I lose my life in You that I might save it Jesus. May my life be made new.
May I be wholly and fully devoted to you, Jesus - willing to go wherever you send me and to lead my family there too.
Amen
