The Alpha and the Omega

Today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the forty days of Lent. I didn’t grow up in a church that observed Lent, and for a long time all I knew about Ash Wednesday was that it was the name of my favorite poem by T.S. Eliot.

Lent is a time when we prepare both to grieve and to celebrate. Over the next forty days, we will look back to Jesus’s path to the Cross and forward past the grave to his Resurrection. We will also look within, here and now, as we examine our own hearts.

On Ash Wednesday we consider the past, the future, and the present in light of our own mortality. The ashes remind us that whether we are poor and needy or successful and healthy, we are all dust—and to dust we shall return (Genesis 3:19). Some people might find that morbid and depressing. If it weren’t for the Resurrection, I would agree. For Easter is the reminder that there is something beyond the dust.

Lent begins with the reminder that humans cannot escape death, a sentence passed down to us from Adam and Eve at the beginning of all things. Easter is the promise that by embracing death, Jesus defeated it for all of us. If you find Lent a bit of a downer, remember that we cannot claim the empty tomb if the cross is empty as well. We only have the hope of Resurrection because Jesus chose the Cross.

Our lives may be finite, but we know there is more, because our God is without a beginning or an end. In Revelation 1:8 (and then again in 21:6 and 22:13) Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” He is, quite simply, everything. I do not mean this in some pantheistic “God is all, and all is God” sense. When someone says, “My kids are everything,” you do not become confused and say, “Do you think your kids are in the trees and rocks?”

No, Jesus is “everything” in the sense that he is the one from whom everything came, for whom everything exists, and toward whom everything is moving. He is the beginning and the end—the source of all things, and also our final destination.

Augustine began his Confessions by writing, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” We were made from the dust, and to dust we will return. But because of the Alpha and the Omega, the ending of our story is just the beginning. The only one whose story ends at Easter is Death, itself.

The road to the Cross is dark, but it is the only path to the light beyond. We need not fear the dust, because the one who made us from the dust will one day raise us up from it to life everlasting.

Reflect

As you reflect on today’s devotional, listen to the song, “Alpha And Omega” while you answer this question:

Over the next forty days, how will you prepare to look back to the Cross and forward to his Resurrection?