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Dusting is my jam. When we divide up the household chores, I am quick to grab the lemon-scented pledge and dust rag and get to work on the furniture, baseboards, and windowsills. I particularly like to dust when it has been a few weeks. There is a greater sense of accomplishment when I can see the dust that was there, is now gone. The other day I was dusting in one of our daughter’s rooms and I remembered a story I had heard in church.
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A little boy came home from the Ash Wednesday service and his mother noticed the very serious look on his face. "What are you thinking about," she asked her son.
"Is it true what the pastor said about all of us coming from dust and turning back into dust?"
"Yes, it is," she said. "Why do you ask?"
"Well," the boy replied, "You better look under my bed because someone's either coming or going."
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Ash Wednesday is a dusty day. A day to remember that we are mortal. We will all one day die. It isn’t a day for exuberant celebration or extravagant abundance. It’s a stripped-down day of realization. A day to get real with all the pretends in your life and be reminded that indeed “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Yes, you and I will die and to dust we will return. You might not think you need to be reminded of this. You know you are going to die, but are you living like it? Are you living life with the expectation that you will return to God? You see most of us do not want to acknowledge our mortality. We know it as a dirty little secret and we live our lives ignoring death until we can’t.
But we can’t ignore the dirtiness of death. The pain of it comes and goes in sighs too deep for words and yet as believers in Christ Jesus we know that death does not have the final word. Our God breathes new life into dry bones and raises us up from the ash heap. That is the day of exuberant celebration. That is the day of extravagant abundance. That is the day when dust shall be no more. Until then, we are urged by the prophets, to “return to the Lord our God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”
May you acknowledge the dust today and turn to God who alone creates in us a clean heart.
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