Why “surrender” might be a more appropriate term than “commitment”:

This generation has a totally different definition of “commitment” than when I was growing up. My parents taught me that when you made a commitment, you kept it no matter what else came along. Your integrity depended on the way you fulfilled your commitments. But this generation believes you can make many commitments and then choose which (if any) you want to keep.

Read Jared Wilson’s meditation for Ash Wednesday. Here’s a sample:

What does God do with dust and ash?
He grows things out of them.
He covers them with purple raiments.
He lifts people out of them.
He unfairly accepts them in exchange for beauty.

Michael Horton’s “A Year of Signposts: Following the Church Calendar”:

While it should never be followed slavishly or with superstition, it helps to have signposts in the year that focus our attention on the momentous events in the life of Christ and the founding of his New Covenant assembly. It is another way of getting us to orient our Church life around the divine drama: Advent (culminating in Christmas), Epiphany (the appearance of the wise men-or, more properly, the appearance of Christ to the Gentiles), Circumcision (the beginning of our Lord’s consecration), Lent (Jesus’ wilderness temptation of forty days, culminating in Good Friday), Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. This is a marvelous tool for education over many years, as long as it doesn’t deteriorate to mere habit.