This is a day for admitting the truth about ourselves and for claiming the truth about God.

The truth about ourselves is that we are rebels, and not in a way that is either admirable nor fashionable. With little to no effort whatsoever, and on a regular basis, we do what comes naturally for us as mortals: we go our own way, we “go it on our own,” we wander, we get off-track, we forget God.

The truth about God that is our repeating refrain on this night is this: God is gracious and merciful. God is slow to anger. God is abounding in steadfast love. And God relents from punishing. These are the assuring words of the prophet Joel from our first reading. The psalmist joins the prophet in singing of a God of steadfast love, a God of abundant mercy, a God who blots out trangresssions, washes thoroughly from iniquity, and cleanses from sin.

Not just any transgression. Not just any iniquity. Not just any sin. But ours, collectively. And yours and mine, individually.

Last week I spent a few days in the hospital. After a weekend of flu-like symptoms, I had become severely dehydrated and my body needed to have its fluid and nutrients and minerals restored. With IV ports in both arms and feeling like quite a drip myself, I watched as the magnesium and the potassium and the sodium flowed back into my body intravenously. As I laid there watching the multiple lines dripping life and health back into my bloodstream, it occurred to me that my body’s RESET buttons, if you will, were being engaged. I was being reset. I was being restored. I was returning to health. Drip by drip by drip.

Ash Wednesday is a day for acknowledging our susceptibility to sin and our ever-present — even daily — need to be “reset.” On this day we acknowledge that what comes most naturally for us is resistance to God, wandering off on our own, and losing the balance of our very center: the Savior from ourselves and of us all, Christ Jesus.

Ash Wednesday is a day for calling this spade a spade about ourselves: to lament our human condition, to come clean about our dust-driven mortality, and then to get reset: to be restored, and to return to God — with hearts made clean and spirits made new. But let’s be clear:

There is no need for groveling.

There is no need for begging.

There is no need to atone for ourselves.

God is the doer in these verses from Psalm 51; God is the active one: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”

God, our Divine “Drip”, ever infuses new life into us. We need only receive the gift of a clean heart.

God, our Eternal Infusion, ever restores us to health and wholeness. We need only bring our brokenness.

God, our Merciful Medicine, ever strengthens us for our journey. We need only acknowledge our every ill and receive the touch of Jesus, into whose life and death we were baptized, whose promise over us trumps all our dust and ash, and whose very life flows through our veins.

“Return to the Lord your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”

With our hearts reset on this promise, our journey begins, continues, and will one day come to an end — in Jesus.

Amen.