DUSTY...

Spider webs captured smoke ash
on shrubs at my home

My household “chore” as a small child was “dusting” the furniture, wiping an old flannel cloth across surfaces. I don't recall dawdling and using my finger to write my name in the dust, although I could have so-”autographed” the household furniture. I just wanted to get through my chore! I remember that chore now as I notice more-than-usual household dust in my own home, no thanks to multiple wildfires in hills and mountains in my part of the state.  

Winds are wafting the smoke into our valley, dusting everything (including what sneaks into the house) with a gray ash veil. And I remember....that ash had great symbolic meaning in the Bible. Often it's used for human mortality and humility before God. One of the more familiar occasions: Job, bereft of all he held dear (children, possessions, health) and left only with a crabby wife. Here he sat in ashes, afflicted with a miserable illness such that nobody wanted to get too close to him, and she hollers, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). (I wouldn't call her an “encourager”!)

It helps to understand this Biblical “sitting in ashes” pose to realize that in those times ashes represented repentance, mourning, humility, and morality. Besides sore-covered Job sitting in the ash heap, some centuries later there was city-wide ash-sitting in Nineveh. That's when Jonah, still dripping in whale saliva, followed through with God's command to call the city to repentance. It shocked the whole evil town, and even the king put aside his royal robes for sackcloth, and left his throne for a pile of ashes (Jonah 3:6).

Such history helps me understand why in Mosaic law, ashes were used in purification rituals. Representing human frailty, judgment and destruction, ashes pointed to cleansing and hope. But I think Jesus put another spin on the rite when He rebuked the evil cities of Korazin and Bethsaida (located north of the Sea of Galilee), which--despite seeing His miracles--refused to repent (“in sackcloth and ashes”--Matt. 11:21) for their sins.

There's nothing magic about “dust and ashes.” But there is truth in their symbolism: that of admitting that the “things of earth”—like living a “good” but Christ-empty life--are worthless unless there's a heart renewed by the purifying power of God.