March 5, 2014
It’s Ash Wednesday and I’m at the State Attorney’s office downtown. I’m waiting with a young woman to speak to someone in the juvenile crime division.
This isn’t what I planned to do on Ash Wednesday, but last week this woman was robbed at gun point outside of her house. Four men took her purse, held a gun, and added to her terror when one man accidentally fired the gun, hitting one of the other men in his group. The bullet ripped through his skinny arm, and they ran.
So here we are, waiting. This woman I’m waiting with is scared. But her fear isn’t for herself. Yes, she jumps at loud noises and continues to look over her shoulder, symptoms that will last for another while. But her fear is for the boys who did this.
They were young. They were so young, she says. And she worries what will happen to them now. We know it’s at least 25 years in adult prison for firing a gun and hitting someone, no matter what the circumstance. She wonders aloud as to what would lead such young boys to doing something like this. They were skinny. They were so skinny, she says. She just wants to feed them and tell them it’s going to be okay.
Anyone who knows about this situation has said something to the effect, “Good. They deserve prison.” I know what they mean. And with this woman next to me, I have to intentionally refrain from wishing the same. But her desire, her reason for being here, to talk to this attorney and argue for leniency, she is in a different place.
On this Ash Wednesday, my prayer is that we use these next 40 days to get where this woman is. Lent is a time of recognizing our humanness, our weakness, our finitude, our mortality. We say on Ash Wednesday, “From dust we came, and to dust we will return.” Recognizing our dustiness is hard, but even that is incomplete.
The first step is recognizing our weakness. The next is to recognize the weakness, the fallenness, the humanness of others. We came from the same dust. We shall end up as the same dust. Can we die to ourselves enough to live into the calling God puts on us? Can we see the dustiness in ourselves, and also in the young man with a gun?
God calls us to be different. And by God, this young woman is living into that calling. She’s not doing it to prove a point. She doesn’t want to be recognized by name, so don’t ask me. She’s doing it because every fiber of her being has told her this is the thing to do. The Christ who indwells her is doing something through her.
Good people, from the dust you came, and to the dust you shall return. It’s what we do in our dusty lives that matters.
