Dear Church Family,
Repentance is…
1. Desire to turn away from past negative behaviors
2. The condition of being filled with remorse for some wrongdoing
3. The short story by Leo Tolstoy, on the human condition.
4. All of the above
The answer is “d: all of the above.” We are fast approaching Ash Wednesday, February 17th, 2010. This is a service that may be unfamiliar to some, especially as a service offered in a Presbyterian Church. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and a day where you receive a cross on your forehead from ashes and water. The minister proclaims to you: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
In the days of the first disciples of Jesus, ashes were used along with sackcloth to express mourning. Wearing funeral garb and dusting oneself with ashes, was a common way to express grief and remorse for feeling alienated from God by behavior or circumstances. During Lent, we spend forty days in reflection and special services and devote additional time to prayers, to fasting and to almsgiving.
Why forty days? This is a symbolic number, and is analogous to Jesus time of withdrawal and temptation in the desert. Many people give something up for Lent: chocolate or desserts, for example. In Victorian England, theatres refrained from costumed shows on Ash Wednesday and offered instead more somber fare to focus on the sacrifice that Christ made for each of us, and all of us together on the cross.
So I close this reflection on Ash Wednesday and Lent with the second verse from the hymn “Forty Days and Forty Nights”:
“Shall not we your sorrow share, and from worldly joys abstain, fasting with unceasing prayer, strong with You to suffer pain?” George Hunt Smyttan
Rev. Judy A. Stanley