Ash Wednesday Prayer (from Alive Now )

Lord, all year we try to avoid dust and ash.
Dust is the homes we have failed to clean and our broken dreams long abandoned.
Ash is the world engulfed in flames and ancient bodies in unmarked graves.
Lord, all year we try to avoid dust and ash,
But here we are. And here you are. And it is Wednesday. And we face reality.
And you insist dust and ash be pressed to our flesh.
We are fragile failures one day to be scorched by fire and snacked by worms.
Yet when it becomes too heavy, you whisper in our ears true things that are also sweet:
“It was into dust and ash I breathed and you awoke.”
Breathe again, Lord, and command us fragile failures to walk on.
Lord, let us remember it all – dust and ash, death and deliverance,
And especially you.
Amen.

From Alive Now (January/February 2015) “Loving Oneself.”
© 2014 Alive Now. Permission granted to use in corporate worship.