Remember Your Death and Live Well

“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19 NIV)

In Ephesians, Paul writes, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins . . . But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (vv. 1, 4-6 NIV).

We are dead in our sin when we don’t know Christ, but the gospel gives us eternal life. Without the salvation promised us through Jesus, we are no more than dust.

In the Old Testament, people marked themselves with ashes to show they were mourning or repenting (see Job 42:6 for an example).

On Ash Wednesday, we can choose to be marked with ashes as a sign of recognition of our mortality, engaging in memento mori, Latin for “Remember your death.” This practice takes place on the first day of Lent, the somber forty days leading up to the Easter celebration of Christ’s victory over earthly death and, therefore, our victory over eternal death.

Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble writes in Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Lenten Devotional,

“Humans are but mortals, mere creatures. God is not some being in the universe that comes into existence, but Existence itself. Every person has life only because God is life. Ash Wednesday is a reminder that humanity needs a Savior because we are but dust and ashes. We need a Savior because the only person who could save us from death is the one who gave us life in the first place. Jesus Christ, who was Life itself, is our last and our only hope.”

Why should we remember that we will die? So that we don’t forget to live–and live well.

The cross of ash on our foreheads is more than a reminder that, sooner or later, we will leave this earthly life behind. It is a reminder that we are charged with using the time we do have to do as Jesus commanded to the best of our abilities: love God, love others. It is a reminder that we owe our opportunity for eternal life to the Son of God who died on a cross.

To read more, join me over at The Glorious Table.