Rembember? Okay.

Part of my great joy of pastoring at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church is leading chapel on Wednesday mornings for our preschool children.  Today, it being Ash Wednesday, I spoke of Ash Wednesday and Lent.  Then I imposed ashes – on foreheads or hands – upon those children who desired to receive them.

So it was that as each child came forward, I said unto them, “Rembember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  One four-year-old boy heard me speak these words to him, looked at his now ashy hand, looked up at me and said, simply, “Okay.”

Okay, I’m dust.  Okay, to dust I shall return.  And with the ashes come the cross with which we were marked in baptism.  Okay, I belong to Jesus.  Okay, in him I have life and freedom.

Okay.  What a wonderful word of acceptance.  I am dead, yet shall I live.  Okay.

May that okay be our okay on this Ash Wednesday.  May we accpet the reality we so often deny – that of sin and our own mortality.  Then may we accept the word of grace and life that comes rushing in.  Not because of who we are, but because of who God is and what Jesus has done.