Ash Wednesday (Includes: Prayer, Fasting & Repentance)

In the Old Testament ashes on the head symbolized mourning, being repentant for sins, and/or humility. Although, today most Christian churches do not put ashes on their heads, but some may mark their foreheads with ashes in the sign of the cross, symbolizing their brokenness over their sin, which Jesus covered with His blood at the cross. Ashes were a sign of “being of the earth; fallen humanity; mourning – for a death, or mourning for our sins (being repentant). What is Ash Wednesday All About? Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting, is the first day of Lent in Western Christianity. It occurs 46 days (40 fasting days, if the 6 Sundays, which are not days of fast, are excluded) before Easter and can fall as early as 4 February or as late as 10 March. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the 40-day season of Lent, a time of repentance and preparation for the great celebration of Easter. Observing Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season can be a way of restoring the important practices of confession and renewal in the church. Ashes were regarded as a symbol of personal remorse and sadness. Often an uncomfortable "sackcloth" garment made of coarse black goat's hair, was worn as well. There are many Old Testament references to the practice. Here are a few: •Job 42:6 "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Job (whose story was written between seventh and fifth centuries B.C.) repented in sackcloth and ashes while prophesying the Babylonian captivity of Jerusalem. •Dan 9:3 (c. 550 B.C.) "And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes." •Jonah 3:5-6 In the fifth century B.C., after Jonah's preaching of conversion and repentance, the town of Nineveh proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, and the king covered himself with sackcloth and sat in the ashes. •Esther 4:1 "When Mordecai perceived all that was done [the decree of King Xerxes, 485-464 B.C., of Persia to kill all of the Jewish people in the Persian Empire], Mordecai rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry." The very early Christian church encouraged the use of sackcloth and ashes for the same symbolic reasons. Tertullian (c. 160-220 AD) wrote that the penitent must "live without joy in the roughness of sackcloth and the squalor of ashes." Eusebius (260-340 AD), the famous early church historian, recounted in his "The History of the church" how an apostate named Natalis came to Pope Zephyrinus clothed in sackcloth and ashes begging forgiveness. Also during this time, for those who were required to do public penance, the priest sprinkled ashes on the head of the person leaving confession. Fasting is also included in the rituals of Ash Wednesday. Some just refrain from eating certain foods. But how does God say we should fast? God says, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every enslaving yoke? Is it not to divide your bead with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house - when you see the naked, that you cover him, and that you hide not yourself from the needs of your own flesh and blood?” “Then shall your light break forth like the morning, and your healing (your restoration and the power of a new life) shall spring forth speedily; your righteousness (your rightness, your justice, and your right relationship with God) shall go before you, conducting you to peace and prosperity, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.” “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, Here I am. If you take away from your midst yokes of oppression (wherever you find them), the finger pointed in scorn toward the oppressed or the godly, and every form of false, harsh, unjust, and wicked speaking. And if you pour out that which sustains your own life for the hungry and satisfy the need of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in darkness, and gloom become like the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy you in drought and in dry places and make strong your bones. And you shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters never fail.” “If you turn away your foot from doing your own pleasure on the Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a spiritual delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor Him and it, not going your own way or finding your own pleasure or speaking with your own idle words, then will you delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage promised for you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” (Isaiah 58:6-14 Amp.)