Beauty in the Ashes

Today is Ash Wednesday, marking the start of our Lenten journey. For the next several weeks, we will follow the call to observe a holy seasonof preparation for the solemnity of Holy Week and the celebration of Easter.

Every year, I begin this day by listening to the same song. It’s a song I listen to at other times as well, but I make a point to listen to it on Ash Wednesday because its lyrics feel appropriate to the day. The song is titled “Beautiful Things,” recorded by the group Gungor. I find the lyrics of the song’s chorus particularly meaningful:

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

The song talks about the molding, shaping, and renewal of creation. On a deeper level, it also talks about how our lives are made new and transformed through hope, grace, and love. It reminds us that God is with us amid pain, uncertainty, and struggle. It reminds us that God continues to make beautiful things, even when the world around us looks bleak and feels difficult.

I think this message is timely as we begin the season of Lent, and I find it especially meaningful this year. We are in a time when our minds, hearts, and news feeds are filled with headlines, images, and stories that consistently cause pain, fear, and anxiety. I feel these things daily, and I see how the young people in my congregation and community feel these things, too.

For me, holding onto the hope that God continues to make beautiful things is a practice that becomes a lifeline. And, this year, finding beauty in the dust of Ash Wednesday is the first way I will engage in this practice during the Lenten season.

Today, many of us will engage in the ritual of the imposition of ashes, where we receive a cross of ashes on our foreheads while hearing these words: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The ashes serve as a reminder of our mortality and of penance. Through them, we are invited to enter the season of Lent with a posture toward repentance, discipline, and drawing near to a God who loves and forgives us. Receiving the ashes is a solemn act, but it’s also a hopeful one. When the ashes are placed on my forehead, I am reminded that God has shaped me into the person that I am and continues to shape me into the person I will become.

God makes beautiful things, even out of the dust.

Before I started to write this post, I looked up and read through the “Invitation to Lent” that is in my faith tradition’s (ELCA) Ash Wednesday liturgy. Here’s a quote, directly from our worship resource, Evangelical Lutheran Worship:

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to a discipline that contends against evil and resists whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbor. I invite you, therefore, to the discipline of Lent—self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love—strengthened by the gifts of word and sacrament.

Through this invitation, we are called to look inward, naming our humanity and need for the grace and love of God. We are also called to look outward and share God’s love with others. When I see this invitation evident in the world around me, and especially in the lives of the young people with whom I work, I see the beauty of God’s molding and forming and transforming nature.

Again, God makes beautiful things, even out of the dust.

Tonight, during the Ash Wednesday service at my church, I will walk to the altar and receive the ashes. And, as I do, I will think of the song I listened to this morning, saying these words as the cross is smudged on my forehead:

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

Then, I will seek out God’s beauty in this Lenten season. I pray we can do the same.