There is something quietly honest about ashes. They interrupt our momentum. They refuse to flatter us. In a week’s time, on Ash Wednesday, we will not gather to be inspired or improved, but to be told the truth – with tenderness. “Remember that you are dust.” Not as an insult, but as a mercy. Before Lent asks anything of us, it tells us who we are: finite, fragile, and deeply loved. 

Most of us arrive at this season already full – full calendars, full inboxes, full minds that rarely rest and souls that feel stretched thin. Lent can easily sound like one more thing to manage, another spiritual task added to an already crowded life. But Ash Wednesday tells a different story. Lent is not about adding more. It is about making room. 

In Scripture, repentance is not merely about remorse; it is about return. “Return to me with all your heart,” God says – not with perfection or spiritual heroics, but with honesty. The ashes on our foreheads mark the place where truth and grace meet. We remember our limits, and we remember God’s nearness to those limits. We are dust – and God is attentive to dust. 

This is where soul care belongs in the life of faith. Soul care is not self-improvement baptized in religious language. It is the humble practice of placing ourselves where grace can reach us. Silence, prayer, journaling, stillness, gentle movement – these are not ways of earning transformation. They are ways of making space for the God who already desires to meet us. 

Lent invites different questions than we are used to asking. Not, “What should I give up?” but “What might I let go of so I can pay attention?” Not, “How can I try harder?” but “Where am I tired, guarded, or numb – and what would it mean to bring that truth to God?” The practices of soul care help us listen with patience and compassion. 

Ash Wednesday reminds us that God does not wait for us on the other side of spiritual success. God meets us in the honest middle – in the dust of our lives as they actually are. Lent is a season for clearing a small patch of ground and saying, “Here is the space I can offer. Meet me here.” 

As we begin this holy season, consider where your life feels crowded or brittle. What might it look like to make a little room this Lent – for silence, for prayer, for rest, for truth? 

You are invited to begin that practice together at Soul Care for Lent on Sunday, February 15, from 10 – 10:50 am in All Saints’ Hall. Later in the season, Soul Care 201 will continue the journey on Sundays March 8, 15, 22, and 29, from 3 – 4:30 pm in the Green Room (Register Here), offering space to explore a wider range of spiritual practices that sustain us for the long walk of faith. 

Grace does its quiet work best when we make room for it.