“…to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.” — Isaiah 61:3
What pictures come to mind when you think of ashes?
Maybe you think of 9/11 — the heavy blanket of putrid ash that coated a city in unspeakable mourning. Maybe you think of volcanic eruptions and the widespread, merciless devastation that follows. Or maybe you think of something closer to home, like your own humanity or mortality. From dust we were formed. To dust we will return.
Ashes. Ruin. Humanity. Mortality.
In God’s Word, when His people were in mourning, a common practice was to outwardly express their inner turmoil by covering their heads in ashes. It was an external reminder of their mere mortality, their frailty. Mourning comes with the human condition, and we cannot escape it.
But don’t give up yet. God’s Word gives us reason to rejoice. Today we see that our deeply compassionate, faithful, and loving God desires to provide a glorious crown of beauty for those who grieve. What an amazing comfort to know that the God Who Sees longs to meet us in any situation and offer us His hope and love.
Why a Crown?
Think about this for a minute — why does our Lord offer us a crown of beauty to replace the soot of sadness we wear?
The answer comes in remembering the truth. Remembering the greatness of the mighty God we serve (the King of Kings). Our holy and righteous Lord is indeed our King. He is Creator and ruler over all. He is Almighty, All Powerful, our Shield and Strength.
Only a King is worthy to offer a crown. And He offers it to us, His bride.
That’s not a metaphor reserved for a future moment. That’s your identity right now. And for leaders, this matters more than you might realize. The way you lead flows directly from the identity you believe about yourself. If you believe you’re defined by your failures, your limitations, or your worst season, you’ll lead from that place. You’ll be guarded, striving, and never enough. But if you believe you are who God says you are (chosen, crowned, restored), your leadership comes from an entirely different source.
The Honest Part
Now here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Because most leaders aren’t walking around covered in literal ashes. The ashes we wear are subtler, and sometimes we’re the ones who lit the fire.
Have you come face to face with your humanity lately? Our flesh will always take us places we do not wish to go. We get swallowed in self-pity and lash out at others in anger. We let that anger rule our hearts and mouths, and speak unthinkable words we can never take back. We sit in the pious seat of self-righteousness while we withhold compassion from the desperately broken brothers and sisters in simple need of a friend. We choose to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. We fail miserably to look to the interests of others, and simply choose to live for ourselves, no matter the cost.
If you’re leading people, that list should hit close to home. Not because you’re a terrible leader, but because you’re a human one. The anger that slips out in a staff meeting. The self-righteousness that dismisses someone else’s perspective. The self-promotion disguised as vision casting. The withholding of grace from someone who needed you to extend it. These are the ashes of leadership, the residue of moments where our humanity got the best of us.
And eventually, those moments bring us to our knees. We see our holy God, and then we see the ugliness of what lies within us. Blackened and soot-covered, we come face to face with the gap between who we’re called to be and who we’ve actually been.
This is the moment most leaders either run from or try to manage. We apologize quickly and move on. We rebrand the failure as a learning opportunity. We bury it under the next initiative. But God isn’t interested in your image management. He’s interested in your restoration.
The King Has Arrived
The good news is that your King has arrived. Your glorious and majestic King of Kings. He is the Lifter of your Head, as He turns your gaze from your ashes to His glory. He reminds you that your fallen, earthly condition is so very temporal, a vapor.
But His love for you is eternal.
His eyes are brimming with compassion, forgiveness, and unfailing love. He looks upon you, His dusty bride, and He sees only what you were meant to be and who you really are: His precious creation, the apple of His eye. He gently places His gleaming crown of beauty on your head, your Bridegroom restoring you to your true identity.
This is the exchange at the heart of the gospel, and at the heart of every leader’s ongoing journey with God. You bring Him your ashes. He gives you a crown. You bring Him your mourning. He gives you gladness. You bring Him your faint spirit. He gives you a garment of praise. You don’t clean yourself up first. You don’t earn your way back. You come as you are, and He does what only a King can do.
That’s not weakness. That’s the most courageous thing a leader can do: stop pretending, stop performing, and let God do the restoring.
Your True Identity
Please know today that you are loved. You are restored. You can be comforted by the only One truly able to bring beauty out of your ashes.
Child of God, take comfort in the eternal crown of beauty that rests upon you this very moment. The love and compassion of your gracious God, your Bridegroom, is yours forever. Let the ashes of your humanity blow as far as the east is from the west, and let your true royal identity shine.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”— 1 Peter 2:9–10
You are part of the royal priesthood. And that identity isn’t something you achieve through better leadership — it’s something you receive through Christ and then lead out of.
The most reliable messengers I’ve known are not the ones with spotless records. They’re the ones who’ve let God turn their ashes into something beautiful and then had the courage to lead from that restored place — openly, humbly, and with nothing left to prove.
Next Steps for the Leader Carrying Ashes
Name it. What ashes are you carrying right now? Not the sanitized version you’d share in a meeting, but the real one. A fractured relationship? A failure you haven’t dealt with? A pattern you keep excusing? God isn’t asking you to broadcast it. He’s asking you to bring it to Him honestly.
Stop managing, start surrendering. The instinct in leadership is to fix, spin, or move past the mess as quickly as possible. Resist that. Sit with God in the ashes long enough to let Him do the exchange. Restoration isn’t a quick pivot, it’s a process. And, it starts with letting go of your need to control the narrative.
Receive before you lead. You cannot give away what you haven’t received. Before you step back into the next meeting, the next sermon, the next strategy session, receive the crown He’s offering. Let your identity be settled in who He says you are, not in your last performance review.
Lead from restoration, not reputation. The leaders who build lasting trust aren’t the ones who appear to have it all together. They’re the ones whose lives tell a story of God’s faithfulness through real brokenness. That’s the kind of leadership people follow. It’s not because it’s impressive, but because it’s true.
Become the lifter of someone else’s head. Once God has turned your gaze from your ashes to His glory, look around. There is someone currently in your life, on your team, in your church, or in your circle who is sitting in their own pile of ashes. They are convinced it’s over. You know what that feels like. Now go be the leader who reminds them it’s not.
You are loved. You are restored. Now lead from that place.