February 17: Ash Wednesday
Read: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 and Matthew 6:1-6
Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near, 2 a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never been before, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations.
12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. 14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16 gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. 17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the period in the church calendar we call Lent. Lent is a period of six weeks that are set apart for drawing near to God and seeking him with greater focus and intensity. It is a time when many people abstain from food or some other activity to help them face the hold their sin has on their lives or to see where they have wandered from God and clung to something else. Disciplines of fasting and abstinence help us identify and detach from anything that is not from God.
The book of Joel describes a time in Judah’s history the people’s sin had become so great the Day of the Lord was on the brink. God sent a swarm of locusts and allowed incredible destruction to the land. It was a day of great violence and in Joel 2:1-2, we see God warn his people that the Day of the Lord is about to dawn; a day of darkness and gloom unlike any day ever before.
Yet, he declares in verse 12, there is hope. He calls to his people, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” He calls them to repent. He calls them to return to him. And Joel reminds them that the Lord their God, “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.”
Lent is a time for us to consider our lives. It’s a time to think about where our hearts have wandered from God; where our lives have drifted from what is right and best. It’s a time to invite the Holy Spirit to show us our true condition and to identify in us any sin that needs our attention. It isn’t that we dwell on how bad we are so much as we remember the depths we’ve been rescued from and hold our lives up to the light of the Holy Spirit to help us draw closer to Jesus.
God cares about our hearts. He wants us to be people whose hearts are tuned to his. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He is a loving Father who disciplines his children for our good. He is a loving Father who delights in us. He has forgiven us through the blood of Jesus and is now reshaping us into his image.
Because God cares about our hearts, we need to be careful with our motives for abstaining or fasting from something during Lent. Scot McKnight suggests that biblical fasting is not primarily to get something. Instead, it is a response to some catastrophic event or grievous or sacred moment or event. In the case of Lent, we are aware we are by nature sinful and continue to struggle with our sin nature. Our response is to fast or abstain from something for a time whether we get anything we hope or not.
God may not answer our prayer. God may not draw us closer to him the way we expect. God may do something completely different. But that’s ok. Our fast/abstinence is an act of worship in response to our heart condition and out of a desire for more of Jesus.
Coming back to Joel 2, the people had experienced an incredible disaster. Locusts were destroying everything. God warns them that the Day of the Lord is near and calls them to repent and to seek him through fasting. He calls them to right hearts; to change their ways; and to seek his face in prayer. God wants their undivided allegiance. He doesn’t want to share them with anything else.
In the end, God responds to the people’s repentance and does not bring the final judgment and destruction of the Day of the Lord upon his people. If you read on in Joel 3, you’ll see God speak through Joel of a future day when those events will take place.
Today, as we begin Lent on this Ash Wednesday 2021, let us rend our hearts not our garments. Let us return to the Lord and invite him to cleanse us from any unrighteousness. Let us look to our God who is gracious and merciful; who is slow to anger; who overflows with steadfast love.
The beauty of Ash Wednesday for believers in Jesus is that the blood of Christ has already washed us clean. The Holy Spirit has already been poured into our hearts and lives. Our reflecting on the cross and on our heart condition is not a “woe-is-me” exercise, but an act of love as we yearn to be made into Christ’s image. With Paul, we press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14).
Questions for Reflection
Where in your life do you feel distant from God?
What distractions keep you from cultivating your relationship with God more intentionally?
Is God inviting you to “give up” or rearrange something in your life for this Lenten season to create more space and passion in your relationship with him? What will you do about it?
Readings for this week:
February 18: Daniel 9:1-14; 1 John 1:3-10
February 19: Daniel 9:15-25a; 2 Timothy 4:1-5
February 20: Psalm 32; Matthew 9:2-13
February 21: Genesis 9:8-17; 1 Peter 3:18-22