Super Wednesday

Good Morning, Lenten Travelers,

Since yesterday was Super Tuesday, this must be Super Wednesday! For some of us it was Fat Tuesday—Mardi Gras…a day of last indulgences—celebrating in grand style for one last day, before embarking on our Lenten journey that leads us to Easter morning. Someone suggested that Fat Tuesday needed to be renamed, Fat-Head Tuesday, in reference to Super Tuesday’s political ventures! :) One of the best things about Super Wednesday is that you don’t have to head out to the polls; or endure the all night political pundits. You won’t be bombarded by all the noise and party-line speeches filled with political rhetoric as they try to convince us he or she is the best candidate.

But wait a minute…I believe all the presidential candidates actually saw their shadows yesterday and it does look like their will be at least 6 more weeks of primaries and fierce, down to the wire campaigning! :)

So allow me to invite you to experience another kind of Super Wednesday where you can gain strength for the journey…not just strength to endure the political brouhaha, but a kind of strength that will give you all that you need for living each day to its fullest. Ash Wednesday is super in its own way. It’s not filled with glitz & glamour nor is it a day for loud and raucous celebrations. It’s the onset of 40 days, not counting Sundays, of personal introspection…going where so many of us are reluctant to go.

I suppose our reluctance is based on the uneasiness and maybe fear of what we will discover; not liking what we might see. So it’s important to realize that it doesn’t have to be that way. For no matter what we may learn about ourselves; or what we may have to face about ourselves; no matter how uncomfortable we may become; no matter the struggle, or how difficult the pain or strong the desire to flee from ourselves, there is hope. There is hope in the midst of whatever we discover or what we have always known about ourselves. God is that hope God not only walks with us every step of the way, God desires to remove all fear, guilt or shame. God is there to take our hand and lead us from darkness into God’s marvelous light with the dawn of each new day.

Ash Wednesday invites us to a time of worship, gathering together as God’s people for a time of quiet reflection and are signed with the ashen cross on our foreheads. As we receive this symbol of being claimed by God and marked for God’s purposes, we will hear one of two declarations, “You are dust and to dust you shall return;” “Repent and believe the Gospel…” Two phrases that allow us to remember our humble beginnings and also offer us hope for the future found in the promise of eternal life—living FOREVER with God—as we read in scripture.

Hmmmm…does that makes us all “marked” men, women & children? Does that mean there’s a bounty on our heads? Doesn’t sound very inviting…where’s the hope in that? Who wants that? Maybe we all do…after all, the bounty has already been paid and we are forgiven and free…
Thanks be to God…

Blessings, Joanne