A Call to Conversion

Lent has begun as of yesterday 22 February with Ash Wednesday. Why are ashes put on our foreheads on this day? Ashes are an anicent symbol of repentance. Ashes also remind us of our mortality. At the end of our lives here on earth, we will stand before God and be judged.

Today this message of mortality and coming judgement day is lost on many of us caught up with personal ambitions. We are so consumed with with our immediate tasks and duties. We are too busy with our careers and attaining our goals for the next few years.The irony is that while we are afraid to be left behind we fail to see what lies beyond in the decades ahead of us. We work hard to  improve our globalized post-modern world. Yet we have lost touch with our Earth's history that 4 billion of years ago, the Earth was quite a different place. In the last hundred years, we have transformed the landscape of our Earth so drastically that many a mountain and river, ecosystems and habitats no longer exist thanks to our quest for development.

Sadly, we have lost touch with our call and purpose as humans and as brothers and sisters to one another. We watch the daily news ever so intently and to the suffering we see on the tele of war and famine, of injustice and disasters; we feel little less than an emotion of being "sorry" for the other. Then we switch off the tele and the images quickly fade away as we so decide to move on to the rest of the day. As if the other was in a distant strange land beyond our universe. When Sunday comes we see ourselves in church and we say the I Confess; with little sincerity, to the what I have done and what I have failed to do.

We have also lost touch with God in our lives and in our world. We are systematically removing Him from our society. We have spent the last 50 years or so doing what we can to control life from creation till death. We want to uncover His mystery and so we have lost His majesty. Where once we could freely lean forward and trust in His gentle presence, today we doubt even to lean an inch forward.

But God is more than this world and God is more than our lifetime of goals and ambitions. He was here even before 4 billion years ago and He will continue to be here.  We can build and build houses and houses of cards. It is only in Christ we can build a house on solid rock, on firm foundation. Today all may be well. But tomorrow we may find ourselves jobless or sick or alone. The happiness we have earned today will not see us through for the next 50 years. We have to keep working to be happy. What is the point of such an ambition?

The God we have been trying to outdo, the one who called all things into being, only He can give us the joy and the peace we seek and that can never be taken away. Acts 17:28 For in him we live and move and have our being.

Lent calls us to conversion. Lent reminds us to prepare well for that final Judgement Day. Lent invites us to die to our sins and rise up to new life in Christ. The imposition of ashes at the start of Lent indicates that I recognise the need for deeper conversion in my life. Lent is a season for renewal. This season of lent we can look at our divided lives and rediscover the call to holiness.