Every morning, before anything else happened at the altar, the priest had a job nobody would put on a poster. He cleared the ashes.
The Daily Duty
The instructions are in Leviticus 6. The priest was to take up the ashes the fire had consumed, set them beside the altar, change his garments, and carry them outside the camp to a clean place. Then he laid fresh wood on the altar. The fire was never to go out, and it could not keep burning under a pile of what it had already burned.
Ashes are not sin or failure. They are what is left of something that once burned. A sacrifice, a season, a prayer that was answered, a ministry that has run its course. They were good fire once. But if they stay, they smother the new fire.
Yesterday's Ashes
Many of us are tending an altar buried in ash: an old disappointment we keep reviewing, a season of spiritual intensity we are still living off, a grudge, a routine that has lost its life, a way God moved once that we expect Him to repeat exactly. Clearing the ashes is not rejecting what God did. It is refusing to let it replace what He is doing now.
Jesus put it this way: “Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17) What God is pouring today needs a vessel with room for it.
Our High Priest
The priests of Leviticus did this work again and again. We have something better: “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.” (Hebrews 4:14) We do not clear the altar alone, and we do not tend it by our own effort. Jesus, our High Priest, has already offered the sacrifice that settles everything. What is left for us is to come near and keep the fire burning with Him.
Something to carry today: Ask God what has burned out and needs carrying away: a hurt, a habit, a memory, a former way of praying. Sweep it away without guilt, and make room for the fire meant to burn today.
Lord Jesus, my High Priest, thank You for what You have done in my past. Show me what has burned out and what I have been holding on to for too long. Help me clear away yesterday's ashes, and kindle in me the fire You mean to burn today. In Jesus' name, Amen.