Susan Brown, a leader in our conference, passed away after a 3-year battle with cancer at just 52 years old. And the last thing I did – the last thing I do every night before I leave his room, was trace the sign of the cross on his forehead, speaking blessing over him before leaving him to sleep in peace. I squeezed my little boy tighter, and kept reading about dinosaurs, and then we sang his bedtime songs together– he always insists on singing them together, - and I listened as I always do to his precious little voice singing about Jesus’ love for all the children of the world (at our house we sing “Brown and beige and black and white/they are precious in his sight). And when that thought struck me, I did the only thing I knew to do.
I was struck by the vastness of eternity – and by just how short our time on earth really is.
#From dust you came full#
There I was, holding my precious and vivacious 3-year old in my lap – who is also adorable, by the way, if you haven’t met him - and I could feel him breathing as his tired head rested on my chest, when all of a sudden the thought popped in my head, “Someday, Daniel and I will die.” It was a jarring moment – this juxtaposition of life and death, there, holding my child, so full of life and energy. As we read about fossils being the remains of animals who walked the earth millions of years ago, I started to think about the mass extinction of dinosaurs that occurred at the end of the Cretacious period – 65 million years ago. I acquiesced, so that night we snuggled up again, this time with our dinosaur books. The next day my son Daniel wore a dinosaur shirt to school and requested dinosaur books from the library. They never found the gas line, and there’s just a little hole in our yard. First UMC trustees, if you’re here, you can relax. My 5-year-old told me nonchalantly they’d dig up the gas line next. It was not long before they discovered the cap to our water line. Next time we went outside, my own little dino diggers started excavating our yard. My kids love digging in the dirt and were entranced watching those “dino diggers” play around in the mud, unearthing ancient fossils. Last week, on a cold evening, my husband and I snuggled up with our 3.5 and 5 year old sons to watch a documentary about paleontologists digging for dinosaur bones in Canada. I’ve decided to share yesterday’s sermon here. Roads were icy in Mansfield last night, so the crowd who gathered for worship was small.
And we begin this journey on Ash Wednesday, placing ashes on our foreheads and hearing the words from Genesis 3:19 - “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We remember the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, and the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert before starting his ministry. Yesterday we began the 40 day season of Lent, a time of preparation for Easter where Christians around the world turn away from the barriers we place between us and God, and draw closer to God through prayer, fasting, and giving. And because Pastor Jenny is amazing, and I am so grateful for the privilege of working with this beautiful servant of God. I don’t post this to show everyone how pious I am, but because it is the only photo I have from the service where our churches came together to declare that we need God. The awkwardness of a smiling selfie with ash-marked foreheads is not lost on me.
Yesterday, after our joint Ash Wednesday service with Main Street United Methodist Church, Pastor Jenny Whitmore and I took this photo. From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.
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