All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust.
Ecclesiastes 3:20
For those of us who identify as Christian, Catholic, or Orthodox, many of us celebrated Ash Wednesday last week. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Season of Lent, the forty days leading into Easter Sunday. At the hospital where I work as a chaplain, I went from room to room, floor to floor placing ashes on the foreheads of anyone who requested it saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” If they were Christian, Catholic, or Orthodox, I would draw a cross like the one in my selfie. If they were non-believers such as agnostic, atheist, or SBNR (spiritual but not religious), I would simply put a line across their foreheads. Surprisingly, a good number of non-believers still requested ashes to be placed on their foreheads with the saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Why is that? Perhaps it is because we all need to be reminded that life is temporary, fleeting, and delicate. When we recognize it as such, we treasure it more and want to make the most of the short time that we have.
How is God inviting you to remember your temporal state of being?
