“Remember, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19

“The cross is still there!” It is a reminder that all of our lives we have to live with a death sentence. We, too, are “marked people.” The cross stands before us at the beginning of Lent, reasserting what God said when he passed judgment upon the whole human race in the Garden of Eden long ago: “Remember, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” The reality of the cross is that it marks us for death, the common fate of all living creatures, of all life on earth. We are covered with “death-dust” during our pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the cross and the tomb; it has to be washed off every day, every step of the way. That dust reminds us of our mortality and God’s immortality, as well as his judgment upon us as sinners.…