Out of the Ashes

 

⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, 

Christ died for the ungodly. 

⁷Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person,

though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 

⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

 Romans 5:6-8

My father was stationed in Germany just after the end of the Second World War.  He was there as part of the occupying force that oversaw German life until that nation could make a new beginning on the other side of the Nazi terror.  One day, dad was walking through the remains of a bombed-out city, a town obliterated by the Allied air attack.  He stopped to look more closely at the pile of rubble that once had been a German home.  All that remained were loose bricks, charred beams, and piles of ash.  Surrounded by the useless remains of a ruined home, something caught my father’s eye, something that reflected the sunlight, something shiny in this sea of incinerated darkness.  He reached into the ashes and pulled out a small crystal vase that somehow had survived the devastation.  Dad wiped away the ashes that clung to the vase and saw the beautiful engraving on its side.  He brought that little vase home and gave it to his parents as a kind of souvenir of his service in Germany and a reminder that even after the horrors of that terrible war, something beautiful could be pulled from the ashes. 

 This year, two very different events have fallen on the same day, Ash Wednesday and St. Valentine’s Day.  You might have wondered, as our church staff did, if one day is big enough to give your heart and mind room to enter into the spirit of both observances.  How can we celebrate the life-giving joy of love on the same day we mark ourselves with ashes to confess our sinfulness and remember our mortality? 

 In our Christian faith, the story of God seeking and saving a lost humanity, love and ashes belong together.  The ashes are the charred burned-out remains of our lives and our world devastated by the destructive power of sin.  We wear ashes today because spiritually we are ashes.  Sin and death seemingly reduce us to nothing.  But then, love enters the scene.  Love walks into the wreckage to find that something worth saving, that prize that can be rescued, washed clean, and given a new life.  Love and ashes belong together because love, sent to us in the person of Jesus Christ, poured his life into the mission of pulling something beautiful from the ashes. 

 Paul marvels at how rare and precious such love is.  He says that only very rarely will someone sacrifice their life to save the life of a great person.  Think of the degree of dedication demanded of Secret Service agents as they stand ready to put themselves between harm and the life they’re sworn to protect, to literally take a bullet to save the life of the President. 

 But the love of Christ, Paul says, goes far beyond even that rare kind of human sacrifice.  Jesus gave his life to pull us from the ashes.  Jesus died for us while we were still sinners.  He stepped into our destruction to see us and seek us and lift us up and wash us clean and give us a new life, a testimony that Jesus found in us something beautiful, something worth saving, and pulled us out of the ashes. 

 What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss

to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,

to bear the dreadful curse for my soul.

Ashes and love. 

The Sweet Sound of the Saw

I was in need of shelving in my storage room.  Having a healthy aversion to spending money, I looked for a way to build these shelves “on the cheap.”  I found a discarded metal frame of a set of shelves that, sadly, did not include the shelves themselves.  I also found some odds and ends pieces of wood at my home and from some discarded furniture at the church.  The question was, “How will I cut the wood into the size needed to fit in the frame and form the shelves?”  I ran through a list of crafty friends in my mind, but decided I didn’t want to ask anyone to enlist in my home improvement project.  Then, I remembered.  Stuck back in the corner of my storage room, covered in black plastic, was the disassembled table saw from my father’s workshop.  I knew this saw had been on a long sabbatical.  To the best of my memory, it had sat idle for more than forty years.  I removed the plastic, laid out the pieces, and found, to my amazement, that everything needed to make a table saw work was there.  Nothing was missing.  Most of this table saw, purchased in the 1960s, was solid steel, a Sears Craftsman last-a-lifetime kind of tool.  I wondered if the belt that connected the electric motor to the pulley that turned the saw blade had rotted in nearly half a century of storage.  Again, to my delight and surprise, the belt seemed solid enough to resume its long-neglected labor.  I put all the pieces together, then, very gingerly, plugged the saw into an extension cord to see if it would work.  The motor cranked up, the belt made laps around the pulleys, and the saw blade began whirring as it spun at high speed.

As I heard the sound of the saw, a kind of hardware instrumental ensemble of a motor, a belt, and a blade, I was suddenly taken back across decades of time and a hundred miles to my dad’s basement workshop.  The last time I’d heard that distinctive saw sound was in his shop on one of the occasions I’d been summoned to be his table saw assistant.  If dad were cutting a long or large piece of wood, he needed a helper to hold up the overhang that wouldn’t fit atop the saw.  By keeping the wood level as dad moved it across the blade, I would prevent the wood from binding against the blade, messing up the cut, or damaging the saw.  Most of my woodworking assistance probably left Dad wondering why good help is so hard to find.  But I learned the sound of the saw, the distinctive sound of dad’s table saw, and hearing it again made me feel as close to him as I’ve been in a long time. 

 The sweet sound of that saw so delighted and inspired me that, though it was late Saturday afternoon and I was tired from a full day of cleaning out and organizing my storage room, I stayed on the job for another hour or two, cutting all the boards I needed to complete my shelving project.  The last thing I thought about as I drifted off to sleep that night was how a simple sound, reprised after so many years, took me on such a heart-warming journey.  

 As I count my blessings this Thanksgiving season, I’ll name a number of things I have in common with most people I know.  I’m grateful for family and friends who love me and brighten my journey.  I’m thankful for good health and a good home.  I praise God for the opportunity to play a part in His kingdom’s work.  But this year, they’ll be an entry on my blessings list that few people would understand.  I’m thankful for the sweet sound of a table saw, mechanical music that took me back to a place and a person I so tenderly cherish.  God gave me a precious gift by playing my song.  May you hear God playing your song soon and often.