Ash Wednesday

Remember that you are but dust, and to dust you shall return.

These words were spoken millions of times all over the world as Christians gathered to begin the Lenten season with ashes on their foreheads. For most it was probably a very solemn occasion for self reflection and a resolution for discipline.

For some it was a day to acknowledge their shortcomings and give up chocolate and meat on Fridays for 40 days. One of the older men at the church was fixing one of the doors today and said that while he was at the hardware store someone was walking around with ashes asking people if they wanted some. He said he would get some that night at church but still thought it was quite odd that someone would give out ashes in a hardware store. How far is too far with evangelism? If people are not showing up for church do we really need to bring church to them and lose everything that makes up church? Lutherans understand worship as an assembly of people around the central things of our faith - bath, table, word, and prayer - some might argue you can find these in a hardware store but I still beg to differ. Some might call me a purist but we can't just bring the elements away from the central place and assume that they still retain their meaning. Everytime someone jumps in a pool we cannot claim that they have been baptized. We need to be intentional about worship and instead of worshipping the things that God has given us as signs of the promise of salvation we need to worship the God that made the promise in the first place. If we put too much emphasis on the thing (water, bread, wine, ashes) we begin to worship that which is not God but what God acts through in order to strengthen our faith in the grace we received on Easter. So while I think its a creative gesture to bring ashes to the hardware store I think that the gesture overshadows what the ashes really mean. Let's rethink this shall we?



OK, on a another note from today I just want to tell everyone that I am never buying pleated pants again. For someone who is pretty confident with an iron I have never had as much trouble as I do with pleats. Who said our pants need pleats anyway? What does that little line do except make us look like we wish we had diamond shaped legs? Maybe there should be instructions on the tag about how exactly we are supposed to get that line to be straight and down the middle and make sure that we don't accidentally make two lines - grrrr.... So I hope flat front pants are gonna be in style for a while because that's all I am gonna buy for a very long time.

Maybe tomorrow I will give you some thoughts I have on people who work out at the Y - all of those mirrors really help with the people watching ;)