A Lenten Reflection

At the beginning of Lent this year, my Lutheran pastor uttered the familiar line at our Zoom Ash Wednesday service – “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Another minister, the Rev. Jenny Phillips, a Methodist, writes that basically, an alternative way to translate the Hebrew word adama – “dust” in Genesis 2:7 – is “earth.”

“Remember that you are earth, and to earth you shall return.”

In this case, we are made of the same substance as the earth, and so our fates are bound together. I strongly believe that we are called to be stewards of this earth from which we are made....