My son, Gordon, got an itch to harvest maple syrup this year – if you’ve been to the farm lately you’ve likely seen the buckets hanging from the big maples in our front yard. He scouted out the trees, tapped them, and went through the lengthy process of boiling down the sap over a fire outside. In the process, pots, spatulas, and jars started showing up by my sink, coated in a thick, black soot. The greasy kind that sticks to everything. The kind that, when you try to wipe it off, simply expands onto any surface it touches. Even Dawn dish soap wasn’t cutting it. What a mess. I found myself in patient frustration, supporting this sweet endeavor he was working on.
This project started a few days before Ash Wednesday.
While sitting in church last week for the first Lenten service of the year, I discovered that dirty black soot had not left me. Under BOTH of my forearms, where I couldn’t see while washing up, was a series of dark black smudges. Stained. I was distracted in church, stained, and then, it all felt fitting.
Sin is like that, isn’t it?
It sticks. It spreads. It’s impossible to clean up on our own. We try to wipe it away, and instead, we just smear it further. We think we’ve washed it off, only to realize later that it’s still clinging to us in places we never even noticed.
Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are dust, and to dust, we shall return. We come before God marked—stained—not with soot from cooking sap over a flame, but with the sin that no amount of scrubbing can remove. We are reminded of our mortality, our brokenness, and our desperate need for a Savior.
But here’s the good news: Christ does what we cannot.
He doesn’t just try to wipe away the smudges; He washes us completely clean. Not with water and soap, but with His own blood, shed for us on the cross. He takes the filth, the stains, the mess that we can’t fix, and He makes us new. Forgiven. Redeemed. Spotless.
In Christ, we aren’t left to scrub at it in vain. He does the work. He cleanses us. He declares us righteous, not because we managed to get ourselves clean, but because He already has.
The process of making real maple syrup can be messy, but the end result is sweet. Life is messy, but the end result—through Christ—is even sweeter.
As we walk through this season of Lent, let’s remember: we are dust, we are stained, but we are also redeemed. And that changes everything.
Blessings,
Leah
Great Heritage Farm
Have you ever done a maple run? It takes a wild amount of sap—about 40 gallons to make just 1 gallon of syrup! In this case, about 5 gallons boiled down to just half a quart. A true labor of love, but oh, is it worth it over warm flapjacks!
