Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 119 verses 49 and 50:
49 Remember your word to your servant,
in which you have made me hope.
50 This is my comfort in my affliction,
that your promise gives me life.
A week ago, the congregation came forward and put on the dark crosses of Ash Wednesday. Rich and poor put them on. Young and old. Clergy and lay alike. This is a part of the sacred liturgy of death. It is a part of our preparation for learning to accept what must be accepted: We are dust; and to dust we shall return.
It is only when we have learned to come forward and take on our ashes and accept the profound reality of our dying, our death, and grieve the world-shattering news that all is truly lost that we can begin then to live in the hope of resurrection. Just as the Phoenix must rise from his ashes, so too the man or woman of resurrection must "live, even though they die," (John 11:25).
In a sermon John Donne considered Adam's curse:
The punishment that God laid upon Adam "In sweat and in sorrowe shalt thou eate thy bread", is but till Man returne to dust: but when man is returnde to Dust, God returnes to the remembrance of that promise: Isay. 26.19"Awake and singe, yee that dwell in the dust."
It is those who have learned to dwell in dust who are also able to live now in heaven. It is those who have accepted the truth that nothing else can save -- nor be saved -- aside from the promise of God.
Again, Donne:
"You must weepe these teares, teares of contrition, teares of mortification, beefore god will wipe all teares from your eyes: you must die this death, this death of the righteous, the death to sinne, before this last enemie, Death, shallbee destroyed in you, and you made partakers of euerlasting life in soule and body too."
The calendar says we are on the other side of Ash Wednesday; those who live here truly live because they have first learned to die.
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