“For you will return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

                                                                                                Genesis 3:19

Now wait just a minute!

A priest was recently speaking to a group of people at a retirement facility and he said, “Some of the senior citizens here can remember a song that was popular a little over 40 years ago. In 1971 a group from Canada called The Five Man Electrical Band had a hit song called Signs.”

I remember when that song came out! Call me a senior citizen . . . of all the nerve!

Once I got over the incredulity of the name-calling, I thought about that song. It is about how signs are always telling us what to do, and the last line of the chorus says, “Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?”

I think that might be an important question to ask ourselves today: “Can’t you read the sign?”

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. This is a season of prayer and penitence. Today many Christians will start or end the day by having a sign put upon their forehead in ashes: the sign of the cross, the sign of our faith. The ashes mean that for the next forty days we are acknowledging our sins and seeking forgiveness for them and making a commitment to remember the sacrifice Christ made for us, a sacrifice we will remember at the end of Lent on Easter.

Wearing this cross reminds us that as followers of Jesus Christ, we too are to carry our crosses. Our crosses of brokenness and sin. But as those ashes fade away and Easter approaches, we are also reminded that redemption will come one morning when the tomb is empty, and our Savior has risen.

Take this holy season and each day remember the sacrifice Christ made for you, and in His Name, do something to honor that sacrifice. Confess your sins and ask forgiveness.

Eternal God. Help us in these next forty days to truly confess and repent our sins, and in our contriteness find forgiveness. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.