Ash Wednesday

The year of 2013 Ash Wednesday fell on February 13.  It came very early, so that Easter will be coming very early.  There is a saying “The Spring will come early if the Easter comes early.”  However, the 2012 Easter came very late, April 8, but the Spring came very early.  All the flowers that usually bloom in May were crazily bloomed in March.  (See those flowers’ photos in Hiroko’s article posted in this blog on March 26, 2012, titled “Chicago’s Crazy Weather 2012 March.”)

On the Ash Wednesday Service, we first praised the Lord and gave thanks for His amazing characters, and confessed our sins and asked forgiveness, and committed our lives to the Lord to live with love for one another in the Lord who made us known for His love on the cross.  Everyone received the cross with ashes on our foreheads as the symbol of our repentance.

Putting the mark of cross with ashes on the attendees’ forehead, both Pastors put the cross with ashes on their forehead of each other.

The cross with ashes on Dan-san’s forehead.  His forehead is very wide, so you can see it better, doesn’t it?

In the Bible, the act of covering the ashes which is the symbol of our repentance are mentioned in many places.  One, Hiroko likes to quote, Job 2:7-13, bellows:

Hiroko read these verses before she became a Christian, and thought she wanted to have the faith like Job had when she became a Christian.  Hiroko wants to say I have the faith like Job right now, but one thing Hiroko can surely say, “I love Jesus very much.”

Job 2:7-13

⁷ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. ⁸ Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.

⁹ His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

¹⁰ He replied, “You are talking like a foolish^[b] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

¹¹ When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. ¹² When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. ¹³ Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.