2/10/2005 09:30:47 AM|||Joel VandenBrink|||

It is the day after Ash Wednesday and the Church has entered its season of preparation for Resurrection Sunday. Growing up Protestant I never partook in the tradition of Ash Wednesday. I always knew about it, but mainly because my friends couldn't eat chocolate or soda and they couldn't eat the pepperoni on 'pizza day' in the high school cafeteria (something i never minded because they would always give them to me).

Last night Brooke and I went to Seattle Vineyard where our good friend Nate Worden spoke the homily. The evening was beautiful, we entered in silence read Psalms of Lament and Poems from Saints and sat in silence. Nate then walked us trough Psalm 51 -- a Psalm that 'comes full circle.' David is crying out to God "Please have mercy on me" at the beginning and then by the end is exclaiming how good God is and that God loves him, and that God is a God of the Resurrection and not a God of death. Tears flowed freely as the ashes were distributed. I was beautifully reminded how desperately I need God and how my only real hope is that Jesus came to show us the best way of life possible.

Thank You Seattle Vineyard for honoring such a beautifully awful tradition.

a more humble person then I was yesterday
joel

|||110805727335598272|||Ash Wednesday