Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Diana Butler Bass wrote this for Ash Wednesday, “The church has always emphasized this verse (taken from Genesis 3:19) as penitence in anticipation of death. You came from nothing; you return to nothing. The starkest of all reminders of fleeting existence, the ever-present reminder of death. But the verse also points another direction — not toward death but toward creation. In Genesis 3:6-7 (a poetic account of the beginning), a spring wells up on the dusty earth. From the resulting clay, God fashioned a man, breathed on him, and thus created humankind: The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
Dust may be our ending, but it was also our beginning. Dust and ash are the stuff of creation. Deserts do bloom. Charred landscapes birth new forests. From dust and ash come flowers and trees and fruitful fields. Dust is not nothing; ash is not nothing. Dust and ash are necessary for life. Repentance isn’t the point. Recognizing the circle of creation, the connectedness of all existence — that is the point.”
Lent can be a humbling time, seeing ourselves for who we are and a time for Spring to push itself through to newness in our lives.