The Imposing Of Ashes

I have experienced times in my life when circumstances seemed so dire, so final, that I gave up hope and twisted myself into a spiritual knot and waited for annihilation. And then on some of those occasions, when I had truly given myself up to whatever would occur, I was “rescued.” The worst was averted, a solution was discovered, the pressure was released, and gratitude flooded my soul.

Being a slow student of my own life, it has taken me longer than it should have to recognize the manner in which I have hoped for this pattern of crisis-and-rescue all through my life. I see it even today, pressed down by a situation that fills me with hopelessness and lethargic despair. And like Muzak in the background, a certain thought wafts through my awareness every minute. That thought is that if I can only fan the embers of despair with enough energy, the full surrender to doom will occur, and then a rescue, a solution, a savior will ride over the hill and charge down into this valley in my direction, and the sun will shoot up into the sky and all will be well.

How much of my own natural force have I squandered in ginning up such staged anxiety in hopes that I can manipulate God into rescuing me? A growing part of my life is a low-grade but sustained embarrassment at how childish I can be, and how slow to learn, and how feeble my understanding seems to be.

But I am grateful that the days of seeing God as a peevish, thunder-browed authority figure Who is forever annoyed at and disappointed in me are gone. I pray they are gone forever and ever. These days, my instinct is to truly see God as my Father, and that this comprehension indicates that I am indeed His (very imperfect and struggling) son. I have come to see that what I experience in this life is (a) the consequences of my own action/inaction, and (b) intended as a lesson to prepare me for….what awaits me on the other side of this life.

Perhaps there is a part of me that wishes my forehead to be forever smudged, not out of a public display of piety, but out of a desire to declare myself unfinished and transitory to a perplexing and often hostile world. It is the world from which I long for rescue, and I cannot manufacture a crisis in my own mind that will ever spur my Father to ride to me prematurely.

Ashes are remnants And remnants are reminders that we are to wait, to abide.

~ S.K. Orr