“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping and mourning; And rend your heart and not your garments.” Joel 2:12-13

It is Ash Wednesday. Today marks the beginning of Lent in Christian churches around the world. Whether or not we’ve had special prayers or liturgies today, this begins a season to deepen our walk with the Lord and to reflect on Jesus in the Gospel as He moves toward his final Passover in Jerusalem.  The forty days of Lent are meant to pay attention to the prophet Joel’s admonition: to fast, weep, mourn and repent as we look forward to Easter.

I am on retreat this week at a monastery. Ash Wednesday was  commemorated today with a special service. Earlier this morning I received the sign of ashes on my forehead and surprisingly, that touch filled me with deep emotions, even to the point of tears. To be thus marked, I could not forget that I was once lost without Christ who found me in the ash pile. Through Jesus and because of Jesus, I am not longer the same woman. The ashes remind me that my old self is gone, incinerated so to speak, and I have been reborn. As other people walked out of the chapel bearing ash marks on their heads, I saw our commonality as Christian believers, not  the differences in theology or practice. Like them I am “saint in the sinner”, a spiritual work in progress. It was both humbling and encouraging.

Sometimes the “old man” in me tries to make a comeback. Pride, anger, lust, envy, greed and sloth skulk around like rabid rats in an abandoned shack. If I’ve stumbled and fallen short, I need to repent and humble myself before God. In the Bible the Israelites put on sack cloth and threw ashes over themselves as a visible sign of repentance. Whenever they finally turned back to God, whenever they cried out to the Lord to save them from disasters or from their enemies, they repented loudly with wailing, old rags and ashes.  It was acknowledgment of their sins against the Most High God.

In the psalms David  repeatedly cries out to God in repentance. Psalm 51 especially reveals David’s penitential heart after he had committed adultery and murder. He acknowledge his transgression against God alone and the evil he’s done  before God first and foremost. He asks to be purged with hyssop and to be washed from his uncleanness. He cries out for renewal, to receive a clean heart, for his sins to be blotted out. Even as he was most likely covered as required in sack cloth and ashes,   David’s heart cry was to be completely clean again in the sight of God.

This Psalm in all its humility and beauty of language should move us in the way the prophet Joel  spoke. God always desires for His people to return to Him  in repentance.   And while we may weep, mourn and fast in repentance, it’s our heart He searches out, whether it is still proud and rebellious or whether we are broken before Him.

Will your heart change this year during Lent? Will there still be anxiety and hurt marking the soul on Good Friday or pride on Easter Sunday? Or will there be a cleansing, not from soap and water washing away ash residue, but from the Holy Spirit downpouring  Jesus’ saving blood on our sins?

I won’t fast this Lent by giving up chocolate or coffee or junk food. .  I’ve tried that before and have always failed miserably. I always, always fail when I try to gain God’s grace through my own efforts and then feel the heavy weight of guilt for not having lived up to some external  standards. I no longer have to earn God’s forgiveness by rending my garments – or even my flesh.   His grace abounds like air and light all around me free, beautiful and ever available. He gives it to a contrite heart and a broken spirit, the heartfelt sorrow  David expressed in Psalm 51.

The  prophets tell us there are times  for sack cloth and ashes.  For me Lent is such a time.  But instead of pointless  and proscribed religious  do’s and don’ts,   let us seek the Holy Spirit  instead and listen closely as He reveals  secret, hidden faults. He will  always gently convict us   in  areas where we  need to return to God, where we need to weep, mourn, pray and fast.  His is  the voice of God in all the penitential psalms, calling His children to return. We cannot escape the sound of love calling us to repentance:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

O Lord, the answer to your Voice is “Yes.”

EAG