It’s Lent. In case you forgot this is the time you and I are supposed to remember we are going to die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. From dust you came, to dust you will return.
It’s funny that we need this reminder, for death is all around us. Open up your news app, turn on the TV, or do the old fashioned thing of separating the thin inky pages of a newspaper and there it is. Death. In your face.
From massacres in New Zealand to airplane crashes. From flooding in Malawi and Mozambique to flooding and storms in the Midwest and Southern United States. Death. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Those may seem a long way off. Yet, even the distance shouldn’t change the fact that those lives and those deaths should impact us. We are all dust and we are all made in the image of God.
But of course there are deaths that impact our day to day living in profound ways. I think of my colleague Walden Hughes who went home to be with Jesus unexpectedly and how it has impacted his family, the faculty and staff at NNU, and his students past and present. Our lives touch one another. And grief spares none of us. Yet it seems so surprising sometimes.
We know we are dust, mere ashes, but when the moment comes it is overwhelming. This every-second-of-every-day thing is unexpected and hard.
Today we had to put our sweet Bella to sleep. We adopted her from the Idaho Humane society in 2012. She had been in an accident and her first family had to give her up because they couldn’t afford the surgery. The Humane Society fixed her front leg and we got to bring her home. She was a Beagle but never howled or dug holes or ran away or dug the trash can out of the cupboard. She was so gentle and sweet, her tail wagged and wagged and wagged and her belly was NEVER full. She loved going on walks and sleeping under a blanket. Her toenails would click click click through our house while she looked for me, she always wanted to be near me.
It’s strange how a pet can come into your heart. I know it’s “just an animal,” but she was ours. She loved us and we loved her. So her decline over the last year has been tough to watch. No more walks, stumbling and struggling, not always eating. And today it was particularly painful as Dustin and Drew took her to be put to sleep. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
We prayed together as a family and gave thanks for her life. She was a reminder to us of the joy of creation and the care and compassion of God. We reminded ourselves that there is resurrection and new creation and God is renewing ALL things and that we have the hope that death isn’t the last word. We talked about death reminding us to live. Live lives that matter. We sang the Doxology together while rain was falling along with our tears. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I remember my aunt Rosemary telling me that she burst into tears when she saw her dad, my grandpa’s, slippers next to his bed after his death. It had to do with the way they were sitting there. It looked like him—the way they were arranged like he had just kicked them off. Grief sneaks up on us in these times. You never know in the midst of your everyday living when you will be surprised by grief.
I told Ethan, our youngest, that this might happen. Today of course is full to the brim with it for us, but in the days to come things will settle down, we will still miss Bella but not as strongly.
But then, watch out!
When you least expect it you’ll see something, hear something, remember something and grief will come—it will sneak up on you. I told him to try to remember that grief is a reminder that you loved. You only are sad, it only hurts, cause you loved that precious Bella.
I was walking through the house in the midst of all this with my shoes untied. The laces clicked on the floor while I walked back and forth to the laundry room to wash Bella’s blankets, to the kitchen to straighten up. Click click click click. Ethan came to me and threw his arms around me, “your shoelaces made me think it was Bella! It’s sneaking up on me already.”
From ashes we came to ashes we will return. We mourn personally and communally. We weep alone in our beds and with our hands intertwined tightly with others in a circle. We are on this road together.
Lent reminds us that we will die and death reminds us we aren’t alone. Christ is with us. Christ is in us as we love one another through hardships. Christ is for us, inviting us to love more deeply, extravagantly, and freely just as he has loved us. Christ has died for us.
I think of the travelers on the road to Emmaus after the crucifixion of Jesus. Their heads were down. They were distressed. When Jesus shows up they don’t recognize him and are incredulous that he doesn’t know what just happened in Jerusalem. He teaches them and they still don’t recognize him. They invite him into their home and still don’t recognize him. It isn’t until he takes the bread, blesses it, and gives it to them that their eyes are opened. Then they know. He is alive!
Not only does grief sneak up on us, but the presence of Jesus can surprise us too. It shouldn’t. Just like the plain reality of death, I believe the simple truth that Jesus is always with us. In their grief, the disciples, had a traveling companion. At their table they had a blessed gift.
Oh grief is sneaky, but the truth is Christ is there. He is there in the hugs of my Ethan, the tears of my husband, the sweet post of my Drew on Instagram. We are in this together with each other and Christ. So when it sneaks up on you, remember you are not alone. For with Paul, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
At the grave, the table, on the hard road of recovery there is Love. By the hospital bed or the doggie bed there is Love. When tears fall or smiles break across our faces in remembrance there is Love. When grief sneaks up on us there is Love that was always there, all along, and ever more will be.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Thanks be to God.
feettoprayer.wordpress.com 