Resurrection : Reborn Out Of The Ashes

We are right now in the Lenten season of 2025 celebrating an ancient tradition symbolizing a believer’s humility before God.

From the Ash Wednesday of this year we began to reflect on our attitudes, on our actions, and our priorities and have hopefully begun returning to God through repentance and sincere prayer.

The season of Lent is all about returning to God–a God who desires to be in a wonderful relationship with us.

A few years ago, I came across a true incident where a forest had been destroyed by fire. It had lost its trees, greenery and beauty and had become black and barren. This episode reminded me as it would remind you the stark reality that everything on this earth burns in some capacity and volume.

Burning is simply the process of something falling apart. The ‘process of burning’ is an energy being released as the molecular bonds are broken and what was once a beautiful tree or a plant is reduced to a pile of black ash.

In this world everything falls apart. Cars break down. Paint flakes off. Flowers fade. Skin wrinkles, heart fails, and flesh decomposes.

Everyone has something that has fallen apart in life. Hopes and dreams also burn. Jobs are lost. Churches split. And in the end, everything turns back to ashes.

And for that reason, during this Lenten season in some churches the believers are marked with ashes on their forehead to display before God the pile of their ashes of fears, sins, disappointments, and failures.

We know as believers in Christ that the destination of this kind of a journey of ashes is the Resurrection! The objective of the Lenten journey is Resurrection. We are given the hope in God’s Holy Scriptures relentlessly that we can be resurrected from our fears, sins, disappointments, and failures.

Over the course of our life as believers, we sometimes unknowingly or consciously develop bad habits, fears and disappointments. So, the word ‘Lent’ which means the season of Spring denotes the Spring Cleaning of the soul.

Spring is the season of renewal, growth, and new beginnings. From the first bloom of a flower to the return of migratory birds, spring is a season of beauty and wonder.

Through fasting and prayer during this Lent we deny ourselves of certain things in order to slow down the pace of our lives.

The purpose of Lent is to reduce ourselves to ashes, meaning to burn our earthly desires, break us down, and call ourselves to humbleness. But on the other side the purpose of Lent is to also bring rebirth out of the ashes.

Let’s go back to the incident I shared about the forest fires at the beginning of this article.

It is said that there are certain kinds of trees that need fire in order to reproduce. The seed pods of these trees will only open under extreme heat. So, by God’s design, periodically lightning will strike a dead tree, and the tree will catch on fire, and a devastating fire will sweep through the forest and leave nothing but ashes.

But then, in the dark soil of ruin, new life begins in the forest. A green shoot forces its way up into the sunshine and the forest is reborn.

So basically if there is No dust, then there is no life. What does that take you to? It takes you to the creation account of Adam. Adam was created out of the dust. From the dark soil, new life begins.

The dust experiences of our lives is never about lamenting, or feeling weak or sinful. The Lent mystery is always been about growing out of weakness, growing out of sinfulness, and burning those places behind and moving on to being reborn.

My prayer for all of us during this Lent is that the fire of God’s Holy Spirit burn away the junk of our life, so that the water of God’s Spirit will wash us fresh as we look forward to the day of resurrection.

Lent is not the journey from bad to good, or from sinner to saint. Lent is the journey of reducing ourselves to ashes and being reborn out of the ashes.

Where we begin our Lenten journey is not as important as to where it takes us. And in the same way, what we give up during the Lent is not as important as to what it makes us become.

However, by doing all these spiritual exercises and disciplines during this season of Lent, we are by no means gaining God’s acceptance, approval, or love. But this entire season until Easter is about teaching and helping ourselves to give our hearts and minds back to God.

Let us reduce ourselves to ashes and then be reborn out of the ashes.