On Ash Wednesday, many congregations impose ashes made from the palm leaves of last year’s Palm Sunday. This long-standing Christian custom proclaims a powerful Gospel of redemption. God’s grace in Jesus Christ gives glorious purpose even to things that appear worthless or useless to us. Palms that seemed dead and disposable almost a year ago—nothing left but ashes—still serve as messengers of the most excellent Word: the saga of sin and salvation.
In the same way, no human life—whether unborn, impaired, chronically suffering, terminally ill, or at any other stage and in any other state—is too lost to reflect God’s abundant love.
Indeed, as Luther’s Small Catechism explains, ashes—like baptism—indicate “that the Old Adam in [all of] us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”