“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis 3:19

On Ash Wednesday 2023, ashes were smeared upon our foreheads—ashes created from the previous year’s Palm Sunday branches, and we were blissfully unaware of the Lenten journey before us, clueless that the road to Easter would include nearly returning our firstborn to the dust.  

It was 7:01 p.m.  We had just begun the Lenten Bible study at church when the call came.  Our son was in a motorcycle accident.  His injuries severe.  His chances of survival slim. It is one thing to be reminded of your own mortality, but your son’s?  

The night was long, full of surgery that he was not expected to survive. And yet he did.  Though the weeks and months to come would be difficult, the surgeon’s words linger with us, “This is a miracle.” On Palm Sunday, a nurse hung a palm, fashioned into a cross, over his hospital bed like a visible claim, a baptismal stake, in this sterile, abysmal space. 

This year, as 2023’s palms are smeared on our foreheads, we will bear the marks of that journey in a visible way.  We could not have born the ordeal without God’s love and care experienced through this community, through strangers and friends, through doctors and nurses, and through other miracle recipients whom we met on our knees in the hospital chapel. This year, we can be grateful that our son not only survived, but has made a full recovery.  

Lent reminds us that we are all on a journey together.  It is not, as it appears, a journey toward death, but a journey to celebrate Life amidst the constant threat of Death even when, by all appearances, it seems as though Death might win.  When the odds are stacked against us, it is God’s love that embraces us, and this is a God who was willing to return his only Son to the dust… for our sake.  Dust is not the end of the story. Thanks be to God.

Reflection: 2 Cor 4:10:  “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”