Every year on Ash Wednesday, you bow your head and are crowned with ashes. You are told, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Hear these words: “you are dust.” We are made from the most basic, humble, fleeting substance: the dirt of the earth. But God’s presence in our lives is what makes us into His image and likeness. His holy breath brings us life. “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Gen. 2:7).
True, we are dust, but because we are made in God’s image and likeness, we are something more. And we were made for one thing: a shared life of love with God. God who is our Maker, our Father. Christ, who is our Brother, our Bridegroom, our Everything. God desires a life of fullness for us. He wants us to allow Him the room to “bind up” and heal our broken hearts. He wants us to come back to Him in the sacrament of Reconciliation when we fail so that he can “proclaim freedom” for us when we are captives of our sins. He yearns to bring us light when we are in the darkness of our self-made prisons of fear, anger, and our lack of forgiveness of others (Isa. 61:1-2).
God the Father sent Jesus the Son to us when we needed Him most of all: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. . .God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5: 6, 8). He comes to us today in the same way, when we need Him most: when we are brokenhearted, hurt, afraid, sinful, and mourning. And He will come. If you open the door to Him, if you ask Him for help, amen, He will come.
And when He comes, expect healing! Maybe not according to our human-expected timeline, but certainly on God’s. He will heal us. When you allow God to come into your life, to make His home in your heart, He will go to work restoring and healing you. “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21: 3-4).
Consider this: a diligent carpenter who buys a house in disrepair makes a plan to restore it. Room by room he works to take away what is broken and neglected. He uses his hands, working to replace and repair broken windows, moldy walls, long-neglected cabinets. It takes time and energy, but the carpenter knows what needs done and takes the time needed to make the old house a home again. This is how God works to heal us. When you invite Him not just to visit your heart occasionally, like for an hour on Sunday mornings, but allow Him to move in, take up residence in your heart, and make his dwelling there (Eph. 3:17), making you a living tabernacle, this is when He will heal and restore you. He will search every nook and cranny in your crumbling heart and go about cleaning and restoring it to a place fit for Him to reign. And you, blessed one, you will be the first beneficiary of His healing.
When you come to God with your transgressions, iniquities, and sins (Psa. 51), He will wash you with living water from His side (Jn. 7:38). With loving care He will wash you, cleansing you from the inside out. When you show Him your wounds—fear, anger, pain, grief, shame, brokenness, despair—He will lovingly anoint them with the oil of joy. He will clothe you with garments of praise: a spotless, white wedding garment, like those who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7: 14). Then you will bow before Him, showing Him your crown of ashes, the dust of your humanity, and He will gently wipe it away, replacing it with an imperishable “crown of beauty” (Isa. 61:3). A regal, flowering headpiece, fit for a child of God, an heir of His kingdom.
Are you not being prepared for a royal wedding? Washed, anointed, clothed, and crowned! You will be “a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Rev. 21:2). This is what God desires most for us: a covenant; a shared life of love with Him. This is our purpose: to love and be loved by He who made us.
But our journey does not end with our healing alone. No, we are healed to serve others. After Jesus cured Peter’s mother-in-law from her fever, what did she do? As soon as the fever left her, “she got up at once and began to wait on them.” (Lk. 4:39). We are to be “a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor” (Isa. 61:3). In our health, we are called to grow and serve and bear fruit—all for the glory of God. In the end, we will “cast our crowns before the throne” (Rev. 4:11) and return all the fruits of our labor and successes to Christ: our Brother, our Bridegroom, our Everything.