Preparing for Ash Wednesday
Learning to Number Our Days
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the forty days of Lent, the season that leads us toward Resurrection Sunday.
If Easter is the day we celebrate new life, Ash Wednesday is the day we remember that our lives are fragile. It is when we stop and tell the truth: we are dust, and one day we will return to dust.
We pause to face the brevity of our existence and to acknowledge that our time here is temporary.
The book of Ecclesiastes begins with words that can sound almost depressing:
“Meaningless! Meaningless! … Everything is meaningless.”
Generations come and go.
What has been will be again.
No one remembers the former generations, and those yet to come will not be remembered either.
At first glance, it seems like the Teacher is telling us that nothing matters. But that is not where he lands. Instead, he discovers that pondering death is one of the clearest paths to a good life.
The Teacher sees that much of what we chase is vapor. We spend enormous energy trying to make temporary things ultimate. We exhaust ourselves trying to be remembered, admired, secure, or impressive. Yet the more tightly we grip those things, the more anxious and fragmented we become.
Ash Wednesday interrupts that frantic striving. It reminds us that our existence is a gift, not a project to secure.
The Tuning Fork of Life
There is a reason Ecclesiastes says we learn more at a funeral than at a feast. Death functions like a tuning fork.
When a piano drifts out of tune, a musician strikes a single pure tone and adjusts every string to match it.
In the same way, remembering our mortality re-tunes our lives. It exposes what is out of harmony and calls us back to what truly matters. When we remember that we will not live forever, we begin to ask better questions:
Are we cultivating love?
Are we injecting healing into the world?
Are we living in a way that echoes beyond our own comfort?
Human beings have been around for roughly 300,000 years. On average, we live about seventy-three of them. Out of the billions who have existed, only a tiny fraction of names are remembered. Yet their impact remains. Every life nudges in some direction.
Some push it toward justice, mercy, and joy.
Others push it toward violence and division.
Ash Wednesday invites us to consider what kind of nudge our lives are giving.
Lent
Lent, beginning with ashes and ending with resurrection, offers renewal. Christianity is not primarily about what happens after we die, rather, it is about the kind of people we become. Its about the world that God is building and wether or not we are taking part in it, or fighting against it.
As for death, the future rests in God’s hands, and Jesus has revealed to us is exactly what God is like —God is like Jesus. We trust the One who embodies love. So instead of obsessing over our legacy, we focus on Christlikeness here and now.
The church has developed practices over centuries to help form us toward that life. The liturgical calendar gives us rhythms that counter the constant pull of consumer culture. Our world’s calendar revolves around buying, selling, winning, and consuming. But Lent asks different questions:
What is shaping you?
What habits are forming your desires?
Even more… What story are you living inside?
Traditionally, Lent is marked by three practices: fasting, prayer, and generosity. Fasting loosens our attachment to comforts and reveals what has too much hold on us. Prayer deepens our awareness of God’s presence and reshapes our inner world. Generosity turns our attention outward, aligning our lives with the self-giving love of Christ.
These practices are ways of opening ourselves to grace.
Sometimes they reveal that our thoughts are guided more by the inventions of billionaires than by the love of Jesus.
Sometimes they uncover that true joy is found not in self-protection but in self-giving.
If we lack practices that form us toward Christlikeness, we are invited to create them. Our daily habits shape our souls far more than our abstract beliefs. Lent gives us space to choose habits that tune us toward love rather than fear.
So as we begin this season, we are invited to look at death without flinching and to release the need to secure our own greatness.
To receive each day as gift.
To love well.
To do good.
To walk humbly with our God.
House Church Discussion Questions
1) What emotions surface for you when you think about your own mortality?
2) How does remembering that life is temporary change the way you think about success, security, or legacy?
3) What are some “vapor” pursuits in your life that might be crowding out what truly lasts?
4) How might fasting, prayer, or generosity help re-tune your life during this season?
5) What specific practice could you adopt during Lent to form you more deeply into the likeness of Christ?