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Return to me with your whole heart.
Boys and girls, when I was a child,
the school I attended was about one mile from my house.
There were two ways to go to get to school.
There was one way this way to the left of my home and
another way to the right, but I never went ever that way.
We always went the same way to school every single day
and we came home the same way.
Either we walked or we bicycled.
One day it was raining, and my dad drove us the other way
I was so amazed that there was another way.
As we are driving, I am taking note of all this
and I was just amazed.
After school, it was not raining.
So, we started to walk home but I said to my brother,
“Hey, let's go the new way.”
And he said, “Are you sure you know the way?”
I said, “Oh yeah, yeah. I watched it the whole way.
I know exactly where we are going.”
And as soon as we turned the corner, we took a left,
we took a right, and we were completely lost.
I did not know where I was.
Now, it normally only took about 20 minutes to walk that mile home.
This time it was an hour and 20 minutes later and it was getting dark.
My brother was getting really mad.
I was getting a little mad myself
because I knew we were lost but it was hard to admit it.
How could I have missed it?
It was just a straight road.
Anyway, I eventually calmed myself down.
This was before cell phones, boys and girls!
I eventually calmed myself down
and as the lights of the town came on,
because we lived right in the middle of a town,
I suddenly recognized the lights of the church steeple in the distance,
and the lights of the town hall as well.
And I said, “I know where we are going now.
Look, there is the steeple of the church and there is the town hall.
That means we live here. So, let's go this way.”
He says, “Why would I believe you now?”
And I said, “Because look, it is the light.
It has shown us the way.”
It was so dramatic. It was very good.
Anyway, we found our way home and
my mother was standing at the door welcoming us home and saying,
“Where were you?”
And my brother says,
“He got us lost. He took the new way home!”
The reason I bring this up, boys and girls,
is that lent is about coming home.
It is about when we get lost and what we do.
Sometimes we know we are lost,
sometimes we do not know we are lost.
It is far worse when we do not know we are lost.
Now we are all here today gathered on Ash Wednesday
because we all admit we are a little lost.
We took a wrong turn.
It was not intentional, but we got lost
because we took a different way home.
Sometimes it is somebody else who got us lost in life
because we followed our brother.
Or maybe it was like me who led other people astray
and we have led others a different way away from the Lord.
That could be in small ways.
It does not have to be dramatic ways like my story,
but it could be smaller ways
in which we say or do things that are well,
we know that are not our best version of ourselves.
We know they are not the way that our parents would want us to act.
There may be things we say or do to our other brothers or sisters
or to our parents or neighbors or even our classmates.
It is certainly not the way our teachers would have us act.
And yet we continue to do them.
Boys and girls, Lent is the time for us to turn back
and to come home and follow the way back to the Lord.
Now the question is then what are the lights
that are going to show us the way?
How are we going to find our way?
The good news is every year the church gives us
three bright lights to take us home.
And they are here every year.
The first light is prayer.
The second one is fasting.
And the third one is almsgiving.
They may not seem obvious as lights,
but once we start to understand what they are,
they are bright lights that show us the way home.
First of all, let's talk about prayer.
Prayer is an attempt for us to take note of the light
that is within our own heart.
Boys and girls, we believe that when God made us,
he made us with an internal beacon inside our own heart.
With that light we will always find our way.
If we listen to God’s voice, we uncover it,
and we can let that light shine.
We will always guide the path hope
But we have to be willing to pause and pray each day
to listen carefully and unveil the light of God within us.
It is there always.
Let no one ever tell you otherwise.
It is always there.
No matter how many mistakes or how many roads,
we go away from God;
no matter how dark it seems to get,
that light is always, always within us.
Prayer allows us to pay attention to that light and see again.
Boys and girls, what I want you to do this year, and all of us,
if we are already people of prayer,
then I am asking you to add 10 to 15 minutes to your prayer.
Boys and girls, if you have not already done prayer each day,
then I am asking you for just 10 minutes each day.
Sometimes you are going to say some prayers.
Other times I want you to just pause and say nothing
and listen to how God is guiding you,
so that you can learn to know that light within your own heart.
Now the second is fasting.
Fasting is a bright light and
we do not give it anywhere near enough credit.
What this does is it sharpens our senses.
You see when I got lost on my way home,
I had to pause and stop to gather myself.
That was kind of like the prayer and then realize,
I know the way home, I know I can do this.
Then I had to sharpen my senses
to see what was around me that I really did know.
I looked at the church and I looked at the town hall
and I recognized these lights.
Boys and girls, fasting sharpens our senses.
When we give up something,
when we stop doing something
not necessarily something that we like to give up by the way,
it may be something that we really like,
but we are doing it to sharpen our senses
so that we can pay attention to the light around us,
pay attention to the God in others.
When that sharpens us,
then we can find a way to be grateful for that light around us.
Boys and girls, I want you to choose one something.
It does not have to be a whole list of 10 things.
Just one thing that you are going to do this Lent
that you are going to fast from to sharpen your senses,
to pay attention to who is around you
that you treasure and you love.
I want you to say to that person, whoever that person is,
each day you can say one good thing to that person each day.
It could be a different person each day,
or you simply say, thank you for being mom.
Thank you for being dad.
Thank you for my teacher.
But every day say one thing that sharpens the senses fast and focus.
The last one is Almsgiving.
This is the light for others.
This the light that shows that the light of God is in others.
When we give alms, we recognize that we are doing is
we are passing the light that we have been given to others.
We give something to them,
we can give our time,
we can give our talent,
or we can give our treasure to them.
But we have to think about why we are doing it.
The reason we are doing it is because they are a child of God,
and they might be lost too.
They might not know where they are or they might be just fine.
But they need the light given to us.
They need the light of our love.
Boys, girls, all three of the lights are different versions of God's love for us.
We are hoping to do this for all the days of Lent.
And you will hear me remind us.
The theme we have chosen for Lent is:
Open the Eyes of Our Heart: A Journey to Easter.
We want to see with the eyes of our heart,
and that is what this is all about.
With praying, fasting, and almsgiving
we will see with the eyes at heart
because God has given us a magnificent gift of his love.
If we can only see that,
then we will be so much fuller of joy and happiness.
Today, boys and girls, in a couple of moments,
we are now going to bless these ashes
and we are going to remind ourselves
the cross on our forehead as an outward sign of our lostness.
That is what we are doing.
The ashes are not a badge of honor that we wear.
This is a sign of our cross that we put on our head and say,
“Yes, I am lost. I need the light to get home.
I need to come back home.”
This is a way for all of us to admit
that we have made mistakes
and we have sometimes got lost small ways
and in sometimes big ways.
Boys and girls, when we come forward,
we are going to come forward like we were coming for communion
and then what we are going to do is the response is just simply amen.
We will say, “Repent and believe in the gospel. Amen.”
That is what this is turning around
and rendering our hearts back to God.
Return to me with your whole heart.
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