Happy Fat Tuesday… Here comes Lent.
Here it comes around again— the most uncomfortable day of the year and it’s on February 13th. It’s that
one day a year when the Church marks our foreheads with ashes with the words, “Remember you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” Ash Wednesday rubs in our faces that one day each of us is going to die. It
makes me squirm just writing about it!
But I want to invite you into that uncomfortable facing of our mortality as an invitation on the threshold of
Lent! Think about the times in your own life that you have had to confront death—whether it be with the
loss of a close relationship or a medical report that’s “terminal” or the death of somebody you love. Such a
time makes us take a step back from our daily life. All of a sudden, we see with such clarity what’s most
important in life and what is not. If we are off the right track, such an event makes us vow to get back on.
If we are heading in the wrong direction, it makes us want to turn ourselves around. We don’t take the
people we love for granted and we want our days to count.
That’s the gift of Ash Wednesday in its marking of the cross on our foreheads as a sign of being claimed
by God’s love in Jesus Christ. It is to hear the invitation to go “in the wild” for 40 days like Jesus. We
trust that the Spirit will lead us, too, in a time to be strengthened in our faith; to be drawn closer to the
Holy One who keeps seeking us out, and to be all we are meant to be as made in God’s image. It is a journey
that promises to be life giving in His name.
So join me and together let us go “IN THE WILD” of Lent!
~ Dr. Laurey Murphy
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