Love and Ashes
If you are in love and Christian you have two Holy Days to celebrate this week—Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. If you are not in love and not Christian, please go about having a great “normal” week. Occasionally these two holidays, one centuries old and one invented by Hallmark, fall back to back, but both celebrate love.
Valentine’s Day is meant to celebrate feel good romantic love– red and pink hearts, chocolates and lots of roses. However commercial, it may remind even those in the longest term relationships to take a day out for romance and may give the newest of couples an excuse to gush. There are a lot of marriage proposals on February 14th, and we’ll have several Chapel wedding bookings in the next week.
Ash Wednesday is also about love. Most people connect Lent with giving up something or taking on a spiritual discipline in preparation for Easter, but Lent is the story of how God loved and continues to love the world. God loves the world with grace and forgiveness, calling us to be reconciled to one another, coming to terms quickly with our accusers, and immersing ourselves in a theology of love that transforms the world, beginning with us.
Albert Einstein once wrote: “If any church would be content to have Jesus’ teachings of love as its creed, I would join that church.” I am not asking you to join a church, but to live with love on your sleeve. To give thanks for the people in your life who are easy to love and those who are a bit more challenging. Let love transform your life this Lent so that you may live as an example of the true joy of Easter and live with the grace that you too receive.
Hallmark missed the boat by not creating Lent cards, but I suppose pink and red hearts sell better than ashes.
Ash Wednesday-ly and Valentine-ly yours,
Stephanie