WEEK ONE 
TITLE: PSALMS OF INSTRUCTION & WISDOM
March 2–March 5

We begin our Lenten journey on a somber note, as we take stock of the condition of our souls. This Lenten examination is crucial because it seems that so many of us tend to hum along on autopilot until something jolts us back to reality. The Message, a paraphrased version of Scripture, says it this way: “Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need first hand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it. I hope the test won’t show that we have failed. But if it comes to that, we’d rather the test showed our failure than yours. We’re rooting for the truth to win out in you. We couldn’t possibly do otherwise” (2 Corinthians 13: 5–8). 

The wisdom psalms are pithy psalms of instruction—psalms encouraging the reader to focus on the eternal rather than the temporal matters of life. Very often this plays out in the form of dramatic contrasts between the ways of the wicked and those of the righteous. Which are we? It appears that with each unfolding day of life we become either more Christlike or less like him. In the context of The Lent Project then, we are encouraged to use the lens of self-examination as we meditate together over the next few weeks on Christ in the Psalter. May the Holy Spirit graciously point out the sins of commission, as well as omission, that we harbor in our hearts as we hopefully hear and heed God’s instructions and commandments.

Day 1 - Wednesday, March 2
ASH WEDNESDAY
Title: THE FRAILTY OF HUMANITY
Scripture: Psalm 90:3-13
You turn man to destruction,
And say, “Return, O children of men.”
For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it is past,
And like a watch in the night.
You carry them away like a flood;
They are like a sleep.
In the morning they are like grass which grows up:
In the morning it flourishes and grows up;
In the evening it is cut down and withers.

For we have been consumed by Your anger,
And by Your wrath we are terrified.
You have set our iniquities before You,
Our secret sins in the light of Your countenance.
For all our days have passed away in Your wrath;
We finish our years like a sigh.
The days of our lives are seventy years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knows the power of Your anger?
For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord! How long? And have compassion on Your servants.

Poetry: 
sorrow song
by Lucille Clifton

for the eyes of the children,
the last to melt,
the last to vaporize,
for the lingering
eyes of the children, staring,
the eyes of the children of
buchenwald,
of vietnam and johannesburg,
for the eyes of the children
of nagasaki,
for the eyes of the children
of middle passage,
for cherokee eyes, ethiopian eyes,
russian eyes, american eyes,
for all that remains of the children,
their eyes,
staring at us, amazed to see
the extraordinary evil in
ordinary men.

THE FRAILTY OF HUMANITY

These are the words of an old man, a man who knows his God, and who has come to know himself. Moses, the friend of God, wrote this psalm when he was an old man.

We begin as dust and we end as dust, and in between we are sinners. God took the dirt of the ground and breathed life, creating a living soul-creating you and me.

And at the end, we have one last sigh, and once more we are on our way to dust. And yet, and yet, we are still souls in the care of our Creator.

I remember the heaviness and burden of my husband’s ashes as I carried them out of the mortuary that day last August. I wondered, “How can it be that this beloved man is reduced to a box of ashes that I can carry?” Beloved dust.

In life, we see ourselves as something bigger: most days we don’t walk around pondering the fact that we will be reduced to dust. Yet this is in fact our end. And, as the Sage of Ecclesiastes assures us, “All are from dust and to dust all return.” As a matter of fact, just a couple of chapters later, the Sage declares that, even while we are vibrantly alive, it is better to go to the House of Mourning than the House of Feasting because death is the end of us all and the wise take it to heart!

So reading this, thinking of this, you are being wise right now. “Teach us to number our days,” our music echoes our Scripture today.

Today is Ash Wednesday. On this day every year, together, we who hope in the Lord Jesus stop and contemplate our earthly end. We gather ourselves together––oldest and youngest––and in liturgical churches, we actually have an ugly, dirty, gritty black cross marked on our foreheads. Ashes! “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return,” we are told. Remember this truth, remember this end. There are seasons to life, as today’s art demonstrates, and we all have an end. Remember this. It is wisdom to be taught by this, to contemplate the sorrow of our days, the burden of our sins, our secret sins, and to number our days.

How can we bear this? Like Moses, we throw ourselves on God’s compassion and we count on God’s return.

We might ask the Creator, our Father, “How do you bear all this grief, God? How can you stand all this certain death of Your creatures?”

“They’re not dead to Me,” comes the answer. I love Jesus’ sturdy answer to His interrogators in Matthew 22 when they are questioning the possibility of the resurrection. Jesus quotes Moses  writing in Exodus, and the truth of eternal life rings clear: “You are quite wrong!” Jesus says to the Sadducees, “God is the God of the living and not the dead.”

God does not lose His own, the things that separate us from each other do not separate us from God. Even death does not separate us from His love or His presence.

So here on Ash Wednesday, with our dusty, ash-crossed heads weighed down by sorrow, we must remember where we are headed in these Lenten days of repentance and fasting and mourning. Because of Jesus and His resurrection, we have a second morning, a birth into an eternal day, where we will rise to meet our Lord and live with Him forever. This is our hope and our sure comfort as we remember our mortal end.

I say it again: God does not lose His own, even our certain death does not separate us from His love. Ponder this, number your days, and be wise.

Prayer
Search me, oh Lord and know my heart.
Try me, and know my cares.
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
 ––Inspired by Psalm 139

Dr. Betsy Barber
Associate Director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation
Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Psychology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.