Weekly Reflection

As I offered ashes to patients and staff at a hospital last week, I was reminded that the dust of Ash Wednesday invites us to see the reality of our common mortality. In receiving ashes, we hear the repeated proclamation: to dust we shall ALL return. 

And…as I marked the forehead of a young patient at the end of her life, I was also reminded that between the dust of our creation and the dust of our death is our one precious LIFE. God does not call us to be lifeless, trivial specks of dust, but rather, we are called as individuals set into motion by the waters of our baptism, for whatever time we are given.

It takes attentiveness, stillness, prayer, and one another to know in our hearts that we are more than dust, more than our wounds, and more than our suffering. 

Moses reassures the Israelites that despite the parched land of affliction and toil, God promises the flowing of milk and honey.  The woman at Bethany, with bold humility, cracks open the jar of her most precious perfumed oil for Jesus. If we are vulnerable enough to give the whole of ourselves to God this Lent, the Spirit seeps in, quenches, and pours into the cracks of our thirsty hearts. 

This Lent, what wounds and arid spaces in your heart are thirsty for Christ’s healing waters?   CALLED invites you to bring your dusty, muddy self to God -  the living water - who is yearning to flow into your life, like perfumed oil, like milk and honey.

• Nina Laubach, CALLED Curriculum Team & Retreat Facilitator