Name: Ash Wednesday
Start: 2025-03-05T12:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-03-05T13:00:00-05:00
Location: 252 S Dargan St, Florence, SC, United States, South Carolina 29506

Ashes are a fitting symbol for the start of Lent. Lent is a penitential season. That means that it’s a season in which we prepare to see his death, burial and resurrection again, by deliberately remembering our great need before God. It would be something like walking down to the bottom of the Atlantic, in order to understand how much water has covered it. In Lent we walk down into the depths of our need, so we can better grasp how great is the grace of God that covers us.
In lent we take time to remember with regret how we have sinned against him, and against our neighbor. We remember that even our greatest strengths- even our highest worship- falls short of God’s glory.
That’s what the ashes represent. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: we are dust, and to dust we shall return. It is the church’s tradition that we mark our foreheads with ashes as a reminder that, outside of the gift of God, we bring no life to the table. In our rebellion against God, we have rejected the source of life, and so these ashes remind us of our mortality. They remind us that aside from the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, only death remains for us. Praise God, that Christ has come.
But where do the ashes themselves come from? There is a tradition here, too.
Each year, one week before Easter, we celebrate Palm Sunday. This is a Sunday in which we remember Jesus’ parade into Jerusalem, riding a donkey- a day on which the crowds heralded him as king! They waved palms as a symbol of worship, and celebration of Jesus. But one week later, that same city is calling for his crucifixion. You see, even our worship, even our religion falls short. It is fickle, and our motives are always mixed.
So we burn the palms from Palm Sunday to remember that even our strengths, even our religion, even our worship is insufficient before the glory of God. Our righteousness is as filthy rags, ashes and dust and nothing more- without his grace.
So the palms represent what we bring to the table- the ashes show us that it’s not much, that the only hope we have, in life and death, is the abundant grace of God. The mercy of Jesus, who takes our death, our ashes, for us.