God’s Plan for Ashes
Ever since I was little, I’ve noticed that throughout the Bible, ashes represent mourning. In ancient days, when tragedy hit, the Israelites would throw ashes on their heads to signify their grief. They would sometimes even sit on a heap of ashes to mourn. When Israelites mourned over their sin, their repentance was often demonstrated by wearing sackcloth and ashes.
Ashes also symbolize worthlessness. Job cried out in his distress, “He hast cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes”( Job 30:19) When Abraham plead with God for the city of Sodom, he prefaced his requests with, “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27)
After all, ashes are just the crumbly bits that remain after everything useful has been consumed. What good can come from ashes?
Isaiah was a prophet during a time when Israel was using ashes to outwardly symbolize repentance and mourning over sin, but their hearts were not in it. God sent Isaiah to tell them:
“Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:4-7)
God didn’t want the outside only: He wanted repentance from the heart.
A few chapters later, in a passage on the coming Messiah and what He would do for His people, look at what God says this Messiah will do with ashes:
“To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:3)
Just as God promised in Isaiah, Jesus redeems the ashes of our lives: the disappointed hopes, the broken dreams, the good things we desired but never received, the remnants of sin’s destruction; He takes all of it and gives us something beautiful instead. In return for our sorrow and mourning, He gives us a joy that is not tied to our circumstances.
The truth of Romans 8:28 transforms our view of those pieces of our lives that have crumbled into ashes. God has promised to use even those things for good. In fact, God often uses the ashes of our lives to do the greatest works in our hearts, and through us, in the hearts of others as well.
That’s why the book of James instructs us:
“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” (1:2-4)
What are your ashes, dear reader? What is there in your life that has seemed to have been destroyed irredeemably? God can and will redeem them, and out of the crumbly, useless bits, He will bring something more beautiful than we could ever imagine!
Give it all to God, and let Him give you beauty, joy, and a heart of praise in return.