It was snowing when I began this reflection. You wouldn’t know it now.

I drove through thick flakes to get to church today to prepare for our Ash Wednesday service. Our siblings in the north are cancelling those same services, due to whiteout conditions. But here in Northern Kentucky the snow is teetering on the edge of rain, and the ground is dark and the twisted tree limbs are bare. The snow falls, but it doesn’t remain.

Today is Ash Wednesday, when I will remind my beloveds, people I wish I could stay with forever, that they are impermanent beings. Fragile as snowflakes and light as dust particles. “From dust you have come,” I will say, “and to dust you shall return.”

It is a hard truth to swallow, some days. When I lose those beloveds to death, or strained and broken relationships. When my world changes and I wish it hadn’t. When the fragile broken edges of this world cut too deep. When everything seems perfect, and I wish I could stop the world, and I can’t. A new day rises and something changes, something’s lost, someone dies. Each day, impermanent as the flakes outside my window.

But this I know: even hard truths are better than easy lies. I would like to tell my beloveds that they will be healthy and young forever, that nothing will ever hurt them, that nothing will ever change. But I can’t.

All I can tell them is it is all in God’s hands.

The same God who sends the snow flakes to remind us even in harshest winter that God designs beautiful things.

Impermanence is a holy state. Change is God’s design. What we are now—the good and bad, the hard and holy, the painful and joyful—it will not be forever.

The only thing that is forever is God’s love for us.

So if today, your world is perfect and you wish it could stay that way forever, be brave, step forward, and take the ashes: it will not last. There is a hard day coming. God will be there when it comes.

And if today, your world is crumbling and you wish you could change everything about it, be brave, step forward, and take the ashes: it will not last. There is a new day coming. God will be there when it comes.

Even now, the rain outside my window is soaking into the soil, hiding its seeds and sprouts deep within, to grow when spring arrives. Nothing stays; everything changes; except for the love of God.

It’s a hard, holy truth.

I swallow, I take the ashes, and I give God thanks.