Today is “Ash Wednesday” which begins the 40 days of “Lent” during which we journey with Jesus as He walks toward His death by crucifixion on “Good Friday” and resurrection from death on “Easter Sunday.”
Ash Wednesday is all about acknowledging our ungodly thoughts and behaviors as sin and in sincere penitence asking for God’s forgiveness and cleansing. From since the Middle Ages, the Christian church has characterized Ash Wednesday with the placing of ashes on the forehead of individuals as a public sign of the person’s confession of sin and their sorrow for it.
Ash Wednesday begins the 40-day season of Lent, a season of testing. The testing is to reveal our real self, our inner essence; who am I and what is my greatest desire? Lent is a time to seriously look within ourselves and make a realistic assessment of our relationship with God. Do my thoughts and behaviors affirm and strengthen my professed identity as a child of God?
Many persons turn away from this inward journey, anxious for the calendar to quickly fast-forward them to Easter and its joyous celebrations, because words like repentance, fasting, discipline, and denial are hard words to think about. Such words do not fit comfortably into our chosen lifestyle of self-will, self-trust, self-satisfaction, and self-exaltation.
However, if we try to take short-cuts or ignore this journey inward in order to avoid the need to respond to God’s Spirit lovingly imploring us to repent, we cannot and will not fully appreciate nor participate in the gladness and glory of Easter Sunday.
Repent? Yes, being human in a wilderness of various temptations, we most likely will stumble in our commitment to the Lordship of Jesus.
Repent? Yes, if we are honest with inviting God’s Spirit to search our heart and thoughts, we will most likely be shown a need to repent of our feeble love for God, our neglect in the reading of His Word, and failure to pray except in emergencies. And we may also be shown a need to repent of selfishness, pride, misplaced priorities, and a failure to live up to the highest and best in our relationship with others.
This Lenten journey with Jesus is also a time to more carefully listen and reflect on His teachings, in order to better understand the gracious immensity of love that compelled and sustained Jesus through unthinkable sufferings and death in order to rescue us from evil’s grip and to reconcile us back into relationship with Himself.
The Christian life is a journey, a process of growth in which we, like the apostle Paul, “press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. … to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12, 14).
We have been loved, saved, and reconciled into a new relationship with Christ. We claim that Christ has made us new creatures, but every day we humbly confess that we have not yet fully become what Christ wants us to be.
The days of “Lent” are marked on our calendars for the purpose of an intentional and sincere self-examination of our relationship with Jesus, who claims to be the Messiah, “God with us.”
Am I living and growing more in love with God? Have my attitudes and behaviors become more like Jesus? Have I always done my best toward being a Jesus-person in my world?
The psalmist prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” (Psalm 139:23-24).
And the hymn writer, Elisha A. Hoffman, prays;
“Lord, I am fondly, earnestly longing into thy holy likeness to grow, thirsting for more and deeper communion, yearning thy love more fully to know.
Dead to the world would I be, O Savior, dead unto sin, alive unto thee. Crucify all the earthly within me, emptied of sin and self may I be.
I would be thine and serve thee forever, filled with thy Spirit, lost in thy love. Come to my heart, Lord, come with anointing, showers of grace send down from above.
Refrain: Open the wells of grace and salvation, pour the rich streams deep into my heart. Cleanse and refine my thought and affection, seal me and make me pure as thou art.
I invite you to join me in making the above prayers our sincere prayer during the six-week Lenten journey that begins today – Ash Wednesday.
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“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – February 22, 2023
Ray M. Geigley
Healing Rays of Righteousness 
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