Remember you are dust...

I love Ash Wednesday. It wells up in my spirit with a rush that dumps me into the joyous solemnity of the Lenten journey with all its giving and giving up and buried A-------s and dismal hymnody.
I love every aspect of it.
Usually.

This year, not so much.
The hymns that typically accompany my journey's start were not a part of my day, which I really cannot blame on anyone but myself. I do work at a church, play the piano and own 30 hymnals. But somehow I did not get to that place I expected to launch from. My intentional stillness was amplified by a blazing head cold that left me flat in bed without any motivation toward any sort of contemplation. Even more not like me.

And then this song got stuck in my head. Give it a listen.

And suddenly, in the quiet of this evening, I'm beginning to get it. A favorite pastor of mine said in her sermon tonight something to this effect: We repent on Ash Wednesday because God longs for us. Not the other way around.
Perhaps all my intentional "remembering" of my mortality and creative lentenizing was getting in the way of where my focus needs to be, on a restoring relationship with the God who has a place in his heart for me.

I'm going to leave it there for a bit.
Lenten blessings to you.