DevoBloging – Day 53
Numbers 13:33
“…There we saw the Nephilim and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them”
It is Ash Wednesday. This is the day we answer the call to penitent living as part of a Lenten discipline. In our services today we will hear the words, “Repent and believe the Gospel. - You are dust and to dust you shall return.” This day more than any other on the church calendar calls us to reflect on our own mortality. If somehow we forgot we are reminded today that no one here get’s out alive. Today’s reading from Numbers should remind us that we are still mightily afraid that unknown called death.
The spies returned from the land of Canaan with great fear. The people who already inhabited the land were said to be giants. The fear for the people was that they would come out of bondage only to be crushed like grasshoppers. In and of itself this fear does not seem unreasonable. After all who wants to be crushed like a bug under foot? However, taken in context the people seemed to have forgotten that God made a promise to deliver his people. God promised not only deliverance from Egypt but also “Promised” land.
Ash Wednesday is not only a time to remember our mortality but to remember the promise that god has made to each of us. For the people of Israel it was the “Promised Land.” For the people called the church it is the promise made complete in the crucifixion-resurrection of God’s son Jesus: eternity. Today we begin our journey toward the celebration of Easter remembering that we will all die but that we need not fear. God is with us and God’s promise abides now and forever.
