Ash Wednesday: Away with All Masks

We’ll be having simple service tonight themed “Away with All Masks” at 8pm, at the Father’s House (BLC premises). Please be our guest if you’d like to start the season with other Christians together in corporate worship.

I confess a sad news marks my start for the season. That’s the “cross” I bear. And this will be a good time for seeking to walk in the way of Jesus.

Words from this meditation written by my young friend – O LAME WHO WALK, HEAR YE! – helps to keep the focus.

“Today’s passage reminds us that our focus must be on Jesus (vv. 2-3). “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men,” the writer of Hebrews says. Jesus calls all His disciples ‘fishers of men’ (Luke 5:1-11), and although we often fail in this, yet He shows up for breakfast and delivers more we’d ever dare imagine (John 21:1-12).

Aware of our mortality, of the mere ashes of which we are made, He nonetheless breathes His life into us and gives us our very being. He is the one who called the lame to walk, and He still does. Let us learn to throw off the sin that entangles and follow Him, that His grace to us may not be in vain (1 Corinthians 15:10). Praise Him.”

There was link to a poem by T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday. It’s long but these following phrases stood out for me right now:

“Lady of silences

Calm and distressed

Torn and most whole

Rose of memory

Rose of forgetfulness

Exhausted and life-giving

Worried reposeful

The single Rose

Is now the Garden

Where all loves end

Terminate torment

Of love unsatisfied

The greater torment

Of love satisfied

End of the endless

Journey to no end

Conclusion of all that

Is inconclusible

Speech without word and

Word of no speech

Grace to the Mother

For the Garden

Where all love ends.”

and this shorter one has become by prayer for today:

“Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.”