Once It Was the Blessing, Now It is the Lord: Ash Wednesday 2024

I’m writing this on Ash Wednesday 2024. Ash Wednesday is an extremely old Christian day commemorating the beginning of Lent. Lent is a 40 days’ length of time of intense discipline leading up to Holy Week and Easter. Christians use the time to mimic Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness, usually abstaining from certain conveniences like favorite foods, alcohol, delicacies, television, etc. The goal is that that for a time they will do without, and draw closer to Christ instead. Ash Wednesday, where ashes are often spread in a cross-shape on the forehead, commences Lent, commemorating that we as humans are simply made from the ground’s dust, and to dust shall we return. But even that is not the end of the story, for Christ is our very life (1 Jn. 5:20).

In the spirit of commitment to Christ—ever the theme of the believing life, not just during Lent—I thought I’d share a couple of lines from this old A.B. Simpson hymn “Himself.” The hymn articulates well what my sermon from this past Sunday took 40+ minutes to say: Discipleship is the constant endeavor to grow in love for the right things with the right proportions. Citing Bernard of Clairvaux’s “4 Loves” (12th c.), the sermon saw that a primary effect of this maturation in love is that one grows out of using God to get things into thanking God for all things, and using things to serve him. Believers over time learn this as they learn that he is himself the treasure. As they grow they “count all things as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:8), willing to lose all things, because he is the source, and they know him directly.

If you observe Lent, let these words give you vocabulary for what you’re pursuing during this season: A life where Christ is treasure, and all things come from and go back to him for whom they exist. 

“Once it was the blessing, now it is the Lord;

Once it was the feeling, now it is His Word; 

Once His gift I wanted, now the Giver own; 

Once I sought for healing, now Himself alone. 

“Once ’twas painful trying, now ’tis perfect trust;

Once a half salvation, now the uttermost!

Once ’twas ceaseless holding, now He holds me fast; 

Once ’twas constant drifting, now my anchor’s cast.” 

“All in all forever, only Christ I’ll sing

Everything is in Christ, 

And Christ is everything.”

                       A.B. Simpson—“Himself,” ad.1891