What God will do with it

We are entering the season that begins with a smudge.
That smudge is a testimony to what survives.
It is a witness to what abides when everything seems lost.
It is a sign that what we know and love may, for a time, be reduced to dust,
but it does not disappear.
We belong to the God who well knows what to do with dust,
who sees the dust as a place to dream anew, who creates from it again and again.

Life will continually lay us bare, sometimes with astonishing severity.
In the midst of this, the season of Lent invites us to see what is most elemental in us,
what endures: the love that creates and animates, the love that cannot be destroyed,
the love that is most basic to who we are.

This season inspires us to ask where this love will lead us, what it will create in and through us,
what God will do with it in both our brokenness and our joy.

Sharing this extract from a very beautiful writing by Jan Richardson entitled: Ash Wednesday: What God Can Do with Dust, from her blog “The Painted Prayerbook”.  

© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com link:  The Painted Prayerbook