| The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor … 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 … for the display of his splendor. |
| —Isaiah 61:1-3 |
I doubt that modern day Americans think much about ashes. I remember reading that my poor Dutch ancestors, while they cleared the land in the mid-nineteenth century, traded ashes used in making lye for essential goods. In the mid-twentieth century, I remember that my grandmother and mother, both with wood stoves in their kitchens, would have to “take the ashes out” to clean the stove bed. If you have an old-fashioned wood fireplace, you know that process. Now, in nearly the mid-twenty-first century, we rarely think about the uses of ashes at all.
In Scripture, we read about those who would “repent in sackcloth and ashes.” This sign of humility and sorrow that led to repentance, as well as an indication of religious fervor, had godly people actually sitting in a pile of ashes and dumping the ashes over their heads. After God allowed Satan to take Job’s family, his livelihood, and his health from him—afflicting Job with horrible boils all over his body—these words from the Job 2:8 tell us:
Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.
From the word pictures of repentance like this one, the Christian church has taken the custom of receiving ashes on the forehead of believers on Ash Wednesday. We learn that, like our sin, ashes produce a mark not easily removed. Our Savior wants us to remember the deep stain of our sin and the extreme effort it took for Him to remove that stain.
Not only does Jesus want to remove the filth of sin from us and “take out the ashes,” He wants to replace that filth with beauty—His beauty. What kind of black marks mar our beauty?
We must stop and consider that Christ wants to cleanse us and trade the ashes of our sin for the “essential goodness” of His beauty. According to our opening passage of Scripture, God intends “the display of his splendor” to come from our attention to this cleansing process.
May our soon-to-be-worn glorious Easter garments show forth radiant praise to God, with which He has replaced our Lenten ashes!
