“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.“

We hear these sobering words each Ash Wednesday. It is sobering to hear them as a cross of ash is smudged on our foreheads. And it is sobering as a pastor to say them. They name the mortality we all share. They are even more poignant reminders of that reality when you must look into the eyes of someone struggling with a terminal disease and say, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I recall the comfort I tried to render decades ago to a friend who had been diagnosed with AIDS. He quipped in reply, “We’re all dying--some of us just more quickly than others.”