messy

Messy...
A word often spoken and seen in Hope's house.

This word spoken by Good Pastor just moments ago in regards to today.

Ash Wednesday.

A day for all God's people to pause and bring words of repentance...

Words carried and folded... 

Prepared for The Refiners fire...

Sins caught in light... 

Forgiveness burns bright...

Pastor fans into flame until...

Only ashes remain.

Not wasting the cost... we are marked...

With love's hands...

All different... all offering their own ashen confessions...

One by one and one to another we choose remembrance...

Sister's painting phylacteries of the ultimate... smallest princess squawking for hers.

Tattooed with the greatest art this world has ever known... each Hopeful marked with The Story.

Everyone wanting to bear a copy.  It's worth more than all the world's riches.

So are the gifts it carries... 

For we not only repent... we remember... and we anticipate that which changed the course of history... 

Resurrection joy.

Intentionally entering into the sacred with eyes fixed on the HOPE He sets before us...

Today...  a day of rain and gray markings.  A day to ask... seek and even to grieve... but it is also a day for preparation...

For... The healing light that bursts through the messy gray brings rays of glory offering what we can't fully fathom.

As Pastor marked me today he spoke truth... 

"Ashes are messy."  

Indeed... 

Much like the princess that wears them.

But I serve the God that brings beauty from ALL ashes... 

His story in these eyes are living proof.