Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a forty-day period of penitent reflection in which we remember our sins and our need of Christ’s redemption. It’s a long-standing tradition in Catholic and many Protestant denominations to have your forehead marked with a cross of ashes both as a reminder to be humble since your sins nailed the Son of God to a tree and as a public witness showing the world that you are a sinner dependent on God. If there ever were a time in our country when Christians needed to put ashes on our foreheads, it is now.