Turning Toward Life: Beginning Again

Rev. Dr. Miriam Méndez,

Executive Minister and Senior Regional Pastor

Lent begins with an honest truth spoken over us: we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Ash Wednesday does not ease us into the season—it grounds us in reality. It names our mortality, our limits, and our deep need for God. And yet, even here, at the very beginning of this holy season, God’s invitation is not one of condemnation, but of grace.

Through the prophet Joel, God does not shout condemnation but issues a summons: “Return to me with all your heart… for I am gracious and merciful” (Joel 2:12–13). Repentance is not humiliation; it is an invitation. It is the courageous act of turning away from what numbs, divides, and diminishes life, and turning toward the God who restores it. To repent is to begin again—honestly, humbly, and together.

This season will guide us through a series of intentional turns. We will turn toward God in prayer, learning again what it means to trust and depend on God rather than our own strength. We will turn toward one another, allowing reconciliation, forgiveness, and community to reshape how we see and love our neighbors. We will turn toward justice, discovering how repentance reaches beyond our hearts and into our actions in the world. We will turn toward the cross, where sacrificial love reveals the true cost—and promise—of discipleship. And finally, we will turn toward new life, trusting that God can bring hope and resurrection even where all seems dry or lost.

But the journey does not begin with all of that at once. It begins here.

Ash Wednesday calls us to stop pretending and to tell the truth about our lives, our churches, and our world. Psalm 51 gives us the language: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Not repair what is convenient. Not improve what is comfortable. Create—something new, something only God can do.

As ashes mark our foreheads, we are reminded that God is not finished with us. Lent begins not in despair but in hope—the hope that turning is possible, that grace is real, and that new beginnings are always within reach.

As we begin this Lenten journey, the question before us is simple but not easy: What needs to be turned over to God as we begin again? May we answer with honesty, humility, and trust—believing that every turning toward God is a turning toward life.

Prayer
God of grace, we confess that we have turned away—

      from you, from one another, and from the life you desire for us.

We have clung to what is familiar rather than what is faithful.
Create in us clean hearts, O God.
Teach us that repentance is not shame but the doorway to renewal.
As we begin this Lenten journey, turn us again toward life.
Amen.