It’s hard to believe that the first Wednesday in February will be Ash Wednesday.  As I considered and anticipate this day, the following ran through my mind:

Ring around the Rosie,

Pocket full of Posie.

Ashes, Ashes,

We all fall down.

            Perhaps I am slipping into the realm of “looney”, but I think it was the ashes of the nursery rhyme that triggered this in my mind.  I remember joining hands, in a circle of friends and acquaintances on the elementary school playground and reciting this saying.  When we finished the rhyme, we would all fall to the ground in hysterical laughter.  But now that I look at the words of the rhyme, they really seem to be rather dark and carry a sense of being morbid.  At the same time, I realize that they are words that really carry no sense at all, but carry meaning in the memories.

            “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down” is a dance we dance on Ash Wednesday.  We reflect on the fact that for many, the words of “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” have been pronounce over their loved ones and will be pronounced over them.  We all fall.  We all fall to the earth, to return to the ashes and dust of which God first used to create us.  Into this dust form, God breathes and life comes forth. 

            And in so, at the same time we are reflecting upon our mortality, we reflect upon the fact that God did not want this pronouncement of “ashes to ashes” to be the last words of life.  God entered the “earth to earth, ashes to ashes and dust” to dust totally and completely in our Savior, Jesus the Christ.  And it is this One who overcame with a word and promise and a presence that the earth can not hold, that ashes can not destroy and time can not bind, nor claim.

            As children, we recited the words of the above silly, non-sense nursery rhyme and never gave them any thought at all.  This silly rhyme, was a means of gathering, of laughing, of meeting and greeting, of ritual and routine.  The best part of the ritual was to fall down laughing, in the midst of these dark tainted words, and then help each other up again and again.  May the Word of God and His church be and do the same for all who have ears and hands of hope and ashes.

                                                            A fruitful Lenten journey to all,

Pastor Dan
Contact Pastor Dan at: pastor@mtzionelca.com