“Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.†Joel 2:13
On the eve of Ash Wednesday and in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I ask myself, not just why God is so gracious, but why God’s grace is so needed. As I’ve watched unprovoked aggression on an unimaginable scale, I’ve become painfully aware of the answer.
We need God’s grace because of the enormity of human sin, especially as that sin is expressed in war. We need divine grace to relieve the pain war inflicts--to mend the wounds war rends--to repair the hearts war breaks. We need God’s grace to stop bombs being launched at children.
We need the intervention of a God who is gracious and merciful; who looks upon all people with a steadfast and abounding love. We need a people of God who are determined to live by the dictates of God’s love. We need a Church committed to making God’s love real by resisting evil and oppression--standing in the face of racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and war—and by renouncing sin and wickedness in all of its shape-shifting forms.
We need this people of God, as individuals and as a body, to kneel on Wednesday and receive the sign of the cross written in ashes. Those ashes are signs of our broken hearts. They are signs of our helplessness before sin and our need for God’s transforming grace. They are signs of our willingness to rise from our knees to be vehicles of God’s grace.
This Ash Wednesday and throughout the Lenten season may the people of God called United Methodists join the world in praying for peace in Ukraine and an end to this conflict. May we pray that God’s grace abound. Amen
A World in Need of Grace
A Reflection on Ash Wednesday