Greetings from Pastor Khader:
Dear friends in Christ,
March has arrived, and with it comes that quiet shift—the days stretch a little longer, the light lingers a little more. But this isn’t spring. Not yet. This is Lent.
The word “Lent” means “lengthening,” and it marks a season not just of changing daylight, but of inner change too. A time to pause, look inward, and clear space for something new.
Each of Lent’s forty days is a call to reflect, to pray, to repent—not in a heavy-handed or guilt-ridden way, but as a way of making room. Like sweeping out a dusty room to let fresh air in. We do this hard work now so that by Easter, we’re ready to rise with it—renewed, lighter, transformed.
Why forty days? Because the Bible is full of meaningful forties:
• Forty days and nights of rain when the earth was flooded in Noah’s time.
• Forty days Moses spent on Mount Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments.
• Forty days Jesus fasted in the wilderness, facing down temptation before stepping into his ministry.
Lent echoes those sacred stories. It’s about preparation. Stripping away distractions. Facing what needs to be faced, so something greater can begin.
We started this season with ashes. A cross drawn on our foreheads—a symbol that ties death and life together. Ashes remind us that we come from dust, and to dust we’ll return. But they’re shaped in the form of the cross, a sign not of despair but of the promise that even death isn’t the end of the story.
Ashes have always symbolized repentance—our sorrow over what we’ve done or left undone. But repentance isn’t just about guilt. Guilt paralyzes. Repentance moves. It’s taking responsibility, not just feeling bad. It’s the belief that something new can grow, even from ruin.
Repentance moves. It’s taking responsibility, not just feeling bad. It’s the belief that something new can grow, even from ruins
The poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote of this in his poem Death of the Phoenix. The phoenix—a bird that burns, then rises—becomes a metaphor for rebirth from ashes. His lines feel especially true in this season:
In the hymns that we sing
there’s a flute, In the flute
that shelters us, fire
In the fire that we feed,
a Green Phoenix…
In the elegy,
I couldn’t tell
my ashes from
your dust.
We’re in the middle of Lent now. Somewhere between the ashes and the resurrection. But let’s keep going. Let’s carry the ashes not as shame, but as a seed—something that just might bloom again.
May Christ walk with us in this season, and bring us to Easter not as the same people, but as people who’ve grown, grieved, and come alive again.