Ash Wednesday – Mourning the Death Sin Has Caused in Our Lives

Journey thorugh Lent beyond the cross to resurrection

Ash Wednesday ranks with Good Friday as one of the busiest days on my blog. For many of us these days mark the beginning and ending of a journey as we walk with Jesus through the final days of his life to the cross. However the cross is not really meant to be the focus of our mourning and fasting. We mourn and fast not because we are heading to the cross but because we are wanting to shed all the hinderances that keep us from an intimate walk with God.

Lent is about looking beyond the cross to the life of God’s kingdom. Asking myself what still needs to be repented of and transformed in  my life so that I can be an effective citizen of God’s resurrection created world is probably the most important question of Lent.

I want to become all that God intends me to be. I want to leave behind all that hinders me from becoming that person. I want to thirst for righteousness and hunger for justice rather than for water and food as I wrote in the prayer I posted yesterday for the first Sunday of Lent .

It is not an easy journey, but then neither was Jesus journey through the cross to resurrection.