Blessing The Dust

He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars
    and calls them each by name.
- Psalm 147:3

It’s the same God who tends the broken heart and hurls the stars into space. As a reminder of who we are - dust and ashes according to the scriptures - take some time to meditate on the possibilities that your belovedness is even greater than what you thought.

Blessing the Dust For Ash Wednesday
—Jan Richardson

All those days
you felt like dust, like dirt,
as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath as insubstantial—

Did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?

This is the day we freely say we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked not for sorrow.
And let us be marked not for shame.

Let us be marked
not for false humility or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff
of which the world is made,

and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge
we bear.