Yee-Haw! It’s finally spring! And you know what April showers bring – well, maybe May flowers, but also safer streets for riding. All the leftover sand that makes riding so treacherous will be carried down into the storm sewers by the gulley-washers coming our way. Of course, after we’ve had the first couple of storms and the streets are clean again I won’t be so happy if the rains continue and booger up our rides for weeks on end. If you’re one of those ambitious, optimistic souls who love to garden, you know that spring is also time to be working the soil so you can get your taters in the ground on Good Friday. Mark is the gardener in our family, but I’ve picked up enough second-hand info to know that the reason he uses the garden in the fall to burn leaves and brush and branches till there’s nothing left but ashes is because the ashes that are left behind are in the right place to be used as fertilizer the following spring. He usually gets a pretty good crop of whatever he has taken the time to put in.
person is currently producing with their life. Or maybe our ashes are simply an opportunity to bring honor to God’s So, I was recently praying about (ok, maybe I was actually memory by saying, “No, I don’t understand what has happened. brooding over) a situation that had gone south almost overnight and I was mourning the loss of past relationships But I trust the Lord to bring good out of this.” and future adventures when that very term “nothing left but ashes” came to my mind. I suddenly remembered the garden and thought – wait a minute – maybe ashes aren’t Jesus Christ lived on this earth always a bad thing. Maybe even though they represent the as a human so He knows firsthand the pain and misery we end of life as we knew it, they aren’t the end of life. go through in life. The Easter story is without a doubt the ultimate life-from-what-was-dead story we will ever hear. Trees themselves are beautiful, but once reduced to ash, He died a seemingly pointless death on behalf of people they contain most of the 13 essential nutrients that new who didn’t know or even care what was happening. But plants need to get from the soil. So a burned tree has the potential to produce more fruit and a bigger variety of fruit there was a point and because Jesus was willing to trust than a tree left standing. Furthermore, ashes can be used God with His own death and because God was faithful to to make soap, which kills bacteria that really could cause resurrect Jesus, we now have the opportunity for new life, the end of life. And old-timers will tell you that they used too. to sprinkle ashes in the outhouse cut down on the smell I don’t know what smoking pile of ashes you’re looking from, ahem - caca. And you know who makes caca, at today, but if you continue to trust the Lord and wait, right? Everyone. We’ve all been responsible for a bad smell a time or two. Last, one of the more recent uses for He will be faithful to bring meaning and life out of ashes is funeral ashes used for the making of jewelry to be the destruction. Focus on that while you’re riding and gardening and you will be forever changed. worn in honor of a loved one. Some jewelry is designed to hold the ashes while other jewelry actually has had the Blessings to you all – Karla ashes infused directly into the glass itself. Well, as usual, my brain hopped right over to the question Mark and Karla Cornick are with the Christian Motorcyclists Association. Find out more about CMA and of “What does all this mean in spiritual terms?” and I thought of the words of Jesus in the book of Luke, chapter God’s plan for your life at www.cmausa.org 4, verses 18-21: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me . . . to heal the brokenhearted . . . to comfort all who mourn . . . to give them beauty for ashes; the oil of joy for mourning . . . “ This means that if we bring our ashes to God – the ashes of a broken relationship, the unexpected and unwanted end of a career, our failing health, the death of a loved one – He will make something good out of those ashes. I don’t pretend to understand why God allows those painful things in life to happen, but it’s obvious from these verses that it is not His will to leave our wounds open and festering. It may be that the Lord needs to break down our overfocus on ourselves in order for us to be more easily spread in His service to those around us. Or we may need the cleansing effect in our attitudes and actions that only ashes can provide. Maybe the ashes from our own lives will help us be more forgiving of the bad smell that another 6 - TRMI APRIL 2020
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