ASH WEDNESDAY

DAILY THOUGHT: BELOVED DUST

Many of us today will have our foreheads crossed with ashes. It is a stark reminder that we came from Dust and one day will return to dust. It is useful for us to remember this, especially when we get over-preoccupied with how we look, what we own and what others think about us. We are not going to be around on this earth forever. Knowing this, as someone once famously said, concentrates our minds wonderfully.

Yet, the fact that we are marked with a cross reminds us of another even greater reality. In the words of Paul, we are God’s beloved and nothing, not even our death, can separate us from God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. We are Beloved Dust.

DAILY PRACTICE:

Go outside sometime and pick up a handful of soil. As you do this, consider two powerful symbols: dust and the cross. This is who we are. We are fallen, fragile, fallible human beings redeemed by God’s love in Christ Jesus. Before going to bed, read the closing words of Romans 8:31–38. Keep these words close to you as drift off to sleep.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

Devotional courtesy of http://www.mosaiek.com/