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Dear Covenant Family,
Maybe today is a day you need a blessing, whether you were able to attend an Ash Wednesday service or are coming home after a long day without a chance to go to church. Maybe step outside and find some dirt to dip your finger into, then make the sign of the cross on your forehead or that of your loved one. And know that you are loved!
Benediction: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday, by Kate Bowler
God, today our finitude is rubbed on our foreheads.
The reality of our limits, our fragile bodies,
spoken over us like a curse:
from dust we are made
to dust we will return.
Some days we need to be reminded
that we are not the perfectibility projects
we set out to be.
We are full of bounce and brimming with hope.
All woes, solvable. All problems, a distant whisper.
When we don’t feel like dust,
Bless us, oh God,
in the ways we trick ourselves into believing,
that our lives are something we’ve made,
that all our accomplishments and successes and mastered mornings
add up to something independent of you.
But on days like today, when our heads hang low
Sunk with the grief of our neediness,
Bless us, oh God.
When our joints don’t work like they should,
when we grow sick or turn gray too soon.
when our bodies betray us…
or perhaps they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.
Tell us again
exactly how you made us:
from dust to dust.
Blessed are we, a mess of contradictions,
in our delusions and deep hopes,
in our fragility and finitude.
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