Ashes, Ashes We All Fall Down

#192

Friend,

Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down!

I have no idea what that song means, but I know what we did as 4-year-olds.

We held hands in a circle and started spinning around as we started reciting the nursery rhyme, until we got to the end of the poem, and we all fell down.

Truthfully, I haven’t thought about this nursery rhyme in about a decade. We are well past the preschool era in our family, but like old songs can do it found a way back in my mind, and now I can’t get that last stanza out.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. It’s a strange holiday where we begin the season of Lent by focusing on our mortality and humanness. We reflect and acknowledge the power of sin and death, while maintaining hope in forgiveness and resurrection.

It’s the day in the Christian year when we, as a church community, gather together and fall down in humility and repentance. And it’s a choice. We can choose to fall down together in humility. We can choose to fall down in worship. We can choose to fall down together.

The choice you and I have is not if we will fall, but when and how we will fall. “Pride goes before the fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) You’ll either tumble and fall unexpectedly or you’ll choose to fall in humility.

I hope you choose to do it in community on Wednesday.

Love,

Aaron

P.S. If you are in the Tulsa area, then our church (Christ Church on Harvard/3515 S. Harvard) is hosting a couple of opportunities to experience Ash Wednesday.

11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Come and go in our Sanctuary
6:00 p.m. Intergenerational Worship in our Sanctuary