Ash Wednesday

The day palms are burned and ashes are put in the form of crosses on the head. There is a lot of symbolism in Christianity, you put crosses on your head, anointing yourself with oil, rosaries….. the list is endless but is symbolism a good thing? As long as you don’t take your eyes off of the God who the symbols point to, you’d be good. Sometimes we forget the message and focus on the messenger, we put our trust in things we can see, feel, touch , hear. We allow ourselves to be distracted by the shiny packages our redemption and salvation comes in. Fasting is simply us denying ourselves of something (mostly food) to remember to focus on God. Prayer Is powerful but the moment you combine it and fasting, hell starts to shake. Say Wednesday itself is a symbol of you think about it. The start of the Easter fast, we go from that to the crucifixion and finally the resurrection. So symbolism done right is a good thing, don’t let people decide what your symbols should represent if God has shown you what it should already. If symbolism wasn’t such a threat to the kingdom of darkness why is the devil digging so hard to remove prayers, crosses and bibles from most places. Schools don’t pray no more, hotels don’t have bibles in them no more and the image of the cross has become offensive to others. Ash Wednesday/ Ash Monday (shout out to the Lebanese dude who educated me on this when I stopped to tell him he started Ash Wednesday two days early) itself is not important. When we look toward what it’s pointing at (symbols are really just there to point at something), then and only then do we really start cooking. Lord for every time I’ve taken my eyes of you and focused on the package, for every time I’ve focused more on the messengers and not the message pointing to you please forgive me. Help me to focus and keep my eyes and my heart fixed on you. Thank you Lord for hearing and answering my prayer. Amen