Ash Wednesday

Last week was Ash Wednesday, and my roommates and I went to a Catholic Cathedral downtown for their 7:00 service before going to work. At the very end of the service, we had ashes placed on our foreheads in the shape of the cross.

I was unprepared for the reactions of people I came into contact with throughout the rest of the day. At the homeless shelter I work at, one of the clients thought that I had been marked by Charlie Manson. As I was driving around with my partner, Soraya, who had also gone to the service with us, the clients we talked to kept looking at our foreheads. We actually brought a client into the shelter on Ash Wednesday and he asked us if we had been marked as Satanists. One resident at the shelter assumed that I was Catholic because I had the ashes on my forehead. Soraya and I took a bathroom break at Trader Joe's, and as we were leaving a person at the checkout started talking to us in Spanish, asking if we had gone to mass. Soraya replied that we had, and he smiled at us.

Throughout the whole day, I did not see one other person with the ashes on their forehead, with the exception of my partner Soraya. I went to the post office after work and the clerk selling me stamps said, "Do you know, you're the first person I've seen all day with ashes? You'd think I would have seen someone by now."

For me, the ashes were not meant to be a way to publicly proclaim my faith in this city, they were to remind me of my brokenness without Christ and my need for Him. And yet, the ashes were a witness to my faith in this busy city. What a reminder that God uses the little things to speak to His greatness.