If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and we don’t know the distance between the two, then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet.

And in that meeting we are reminded of promises: That we are God’s, that there is no sin, no darkness, and yes, no grave that God will not come to find us in and love us back to life.

from Accidental Saints