What's with all the smudges; OR Why we Celebrate Ash Wednesday
Growing up as a kid, like many kids, I paid no mind the church calendar; unless it was Christmas. I was a kid after all. When I was in high school, I began to explore my faith. I was enrolled in a Catholic school, while being confirmed into a Presbyterian Church. That's when I began to notice the weird (to me) practice every Lent of my classmates walking around with smudges of ash on their forehead. So what exactly is Ash Wednesday? For some of my Protestant friends they find the day odd, and very Catholic. I do agree there is no biblical directive for us to celebrate Ash Wednesday. Just like there isn't a directive to celebrate Christmas or Easter. But there is at its core a great biblical theology of creation, sin, our mortality, grace and death. It calls us to community in our shared brokenness and the humility of our mortality. So we are entering the Lenten season. Christian’s worldwide mark the beginning of this season with Ash Wednesday. A day we make a visible