Ash Wednesday is a tough day.

We ask you to consider your sins. We remind you of your mortality. We call you to repentance.

It’s not exactly fun. But it’s part of a process – a process that takes some time, requires some soul searching, demands we face some tough realities. But the process doesn’t stop there. It ends in new life, new possibilities, new hopes. It ends in the ultimate promises of our God, who never abandons us and always welcomes us home.

But you can’t get to the end without starting with ashes. Jesus began his ministry with a 40 day struggle in the desert. There he faced his demons and temptations, and discovered who he was and what he was made of. He learned the truth about himself. And once we learn the truth about ourselves, there is no power that can overcome us. We are ironically liberated by our awareness of our limitations. We come to terms with our fundamental humanity. Ashes mark us as mortal, less than God, limited, frail.

It is true that there is much goodness in each of us. It is also true that we have all fallen short of the glory for which we were intended. Ash Wednesday points us to both of these truths – it reminds us that we are worthy of God’s love – but it also reminds us that we are frail. The frailty is hard to face. But it is only conquered by facing it.

This Lent, I hope to take the steps I need to take to face myself – to honestly assess all that I am and all that I am not. I hope to better understand why I do some of the destructive things I do. And I hope to overcome one or two of my bad habits. Most of all, I hope to realize the love of God – a love that accepts my frailty and faults, while also calling me to be more than I presently am.

A recent Advent sermon from Steve Bauman struck a cord:

How this season before Christmas has devolved in our time is quite pathetic. The post-modern Christmas phantasmagoria is all about escape, distraction and consumerism and has little to contribute to the living of our days beyond a bit of merrymaking, which is alright so far as it goes, I suppose. Those of you that know me, know I’m all for some excellent merrymaking.

Merrymaking is one seasonal obligation, the other concerns buying lots of stuff and whatnot to keep our economic engines humming — especially this year. Don’t you find it darkly ironic that one our most sacred ritual seasons has been so completely subsumed by global consumerism that our political class would just as soon all of us spend ourselves into oblivion as the year comes to an end as a kind of sacrifice to the economic gods?

You can read the whole thing here.

Each year I walk through the elaborate displays at my local mall. In the center of the mall is a fantastic altar to the Consumer Gods of Christmas and their symbols: Santa Claus, reindeer, candy-canes, gingerbread houses. No sign of Jesus. No sign of anything that might transcend the mall itself, let alone the limits of our lives and the powers that be.

What if the church offered a real alternative? What if we refused to be complicit with all the simplistic merry-making and saccharine sentiment and destructive overindulgence and instead simply offered a baby, born in a manger, born to transform the world, born to show us a new way of living, born so that we might have life – abundant life – not discounted, mega-sized, tinsel-wrapped life – but authentically abundant life? What if we were faithful to that?

I find it hard to do the things that I want to do. Why is that?

First of all, what do I want to do? I want to read more. I want to write more. Those two seem preeminent. But I also want to spend more time with friends and family. I want to excersize (really). I want to travel. I want to spend time enriching myself and my life.

But there seems so little opportunity for those things. Just finding an hour a day to read is challenging enough. Work gets in the way. Especially when you have as many evening commitments as we pastors tend to have. And other things suck up my time – How many times have I plopped down in front of the television just to space out for a few minutes only to find the energy to turn the television off a few hours later?

The point is that I have the time I need. But I find it hard to use it the way I want.

I read a book called the Now Habit once. It had an intriguing premise. The basic idea was that you should discern what you really want to do, and then schedule the time to do those things on your calendar BEFORE you schedule anything else. In other words, really pirortize what is really important to you. I think that is a great idea! Maybe I’ll spend some time this week doing just that before Advent comes and the year ends without me even realizing it!

Salvation is only secondarily assuring you of an eternal life; it is first of all giving you that life now, and saying, “If now, then also later,” and that becomes your deep inner certitude! If God would accept me now when I am clearly unworthy, then why would God change his policy later? You can begin to rest, enjoy and love life.

- Richard Rohr in Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Then in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

From “The Stare’s Nest by My Window” in Meditations in Time of Civil War

From Indexed by Jessica Hagy.