Ash Wednesday – 2016 – Peace – 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Read the text here: 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down Probably we are all familiar with this child’s playground rhyme: Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Probably many of us have not only heard this before but maybe even some of us can remember chanting it on the playground when we were children. What we may not realize though is that that children’s rhyme is all about death and suffering. Like many fairy tales which tend sometimes to be rather dark, having come out of dark times and experiences, this particular rhyme has been traced by some scholars back to the time of the Black Death – the Bubonic Plague outbreak in London in the early 17 th century. The rhyme touches on a common symptom of the disease – the rosie ring - an unfortunately completely ineffective prevention strategy – the pocket full of posies - but ends with death – “ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” And it is tr...