The universal Christians today (Ash Wednesday) observes the beginning of their season of Lent (40 days fasting), before Easter. It is a moveable feast, falling on a different date each year because it is dependent on the date of Easter.

Lent or fasting is traditionally associated with “giving things up” and “giving to those in need”.  As non-traditional Christians, Lent is being re-discovered by us fueled by the desire for a forty-day journey into the proverbial desert to follow Jesus Christ, focusing on our heart’s deepest longings to know Him but also to address our silly and off times sinful compromises that rob us of joy.

We the faithful open the season of Lent today by putting ashes by the Priest on our foreheads as the Church admonishes, “Turn away from sin and believe the Gospel.”  To have the ashes smeared on our foreheads is to embrace a grim truth about our limits. We are made from dust, we all arrive here from the same humble beginnings. No one among us came from anything other than the earthly design of human birth. And to dust we shall return - we are mortal.

It reminds us that Without God, nothing has value. Without God, we are nothing. With God, everything is beautiful, or with God, everything is possible. God has become like us so that we may become like Him.

According to Scriptures, Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, during which he endured temptation by Satan. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of this 40-day liturgical period of prayer and fasting. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a sign of mourning and repentance to God. The ashes on our foreheads remind us of the temporariness of all things and all peoples.

Ash Wednesday is an opportunity for Christians from many traditions to come together and recognize our need for Jesus. It reminds that our time, talents and treasures were entrusted by God to us temporarily. The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord, says Psalm 241. Everything is grace. You have done nothing to merit being a child of God. None of us is self-made. When God created us, he looked at us and found us very good.

We each live subject to the human constraints of death, weakness, sin, shame, and pain. The ashes remind us that we are but fleeting flowers in a field, here today and gone tomorrow. Perhaps, we think, we can undo our weakness. Or maybe we can live only out of our strengths, thus avoiding the need to display our weaknesses before others.

So, here is hoping and praying that these 40 days will draw us closer to God, help us recognize and amend our sinful ways, and prepare us for the great and glorious resurrection of Our Lord.