Grace Lutheran Church Ash Wednesday

With all your heart turn to the Lord, who waits in secret to reward through Christ, who our transgressions bore that we might righteous be once more.

Ash Wednesday begins our Lenten journey; 40 days plus 6 Sundays till Easter Sunday. A time of prayer, fasting, repentance, remorse and spiritual growth.

Here at Grace, Pastor saves the palms from the Palm Sunday service the previous year, burns them and uses the ashes for our Ash Wednesday Service. During the service members of the congregation are invited to come forward to receive Ashes.

As they are applied he uses a quote from Genesis 3:19
"From dust you were made, and to dust you shall return."

¹²Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; ¹³rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. ¹⁴Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God? ¹⁵Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; ¹⁶gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy. ¹⁷Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

¹⁸Then the Lord became jealous for his land, and had pity on his people. ¹⁹In response to his people the Lord said: I am sending you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a mockery among the nations.