Ash Wednesday...

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. ~Isaiah 61:1-3

Today we are celebrating Ash Wednesday, the traditional beginning of the season of Lent. It's a day of repentance, of turning away from our sinful ways and turning towards the holiness of our Lord.

I've always thought it odd that Mardi Gras is such a huge holiday. The last day to indulge in sinful behaviors before entering a season of consciously avoiding sin is nothing more than an attempt to hold onto those things we'd prefer to be doing instead of pursuing what we sometimes look at as the restrictive ways of our Lord. Ironic.

You see, the things that people often choose to pursue in advance of Lent are those things that enslave us. Think about the billions and billions of dollars spent each year battling things like over-eating, alcoholism, sex addiction, out-of-control gambling, and drug addiction. And yet on the day before Ash Wednesday, millions celebrate the very things that are destroying their lives. There's something hopelessly fallen about that.

So I love Ash Wednesday because it is the first day of our celebration of freedom. It's the day that we begin to identify our captors, and facing them one by one, we turn and walk away. It's that simple. Sin is defeated. It holds no power over us anymore. We are in Christ. We have but one job to do; we have to turn around. We have to abandon the old things that destroy our lives and, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, we run in hot pursuit of the One Who gave Himself as a ransom for our sin.

What a time of joy! We've been delivered from the darkness. He's given us beauty ... His beauty ... for the ashes in our lives.