February 2026
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
“The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18.
As we enter the season of Lent, the Church leads us again to a place our world works very hard to avoid: the reality of death. In my twenty-one years as a pastor in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, I have watched a troubling shift take root, one that has quietly spread because it has been borrowed from elsewhere. We have begun to celebrate life while avoiding death. We rename funerals as “celebrations of life,” postpone grief, and speak as though acknowledging loss might somehow undo the hope we confess. But hope does not grow by ignoring death. It grows only by passing through it.
Even our celebration of Easter has been weakened by this avoidance. How can we rejoice fully in the resurrection if we no longer understand why Christ had to die? At one time, even the wider world knew when it was Easter. Today, many churches stand nearly empty on the highest feast of the Church Year, and “Happy Easter” is often met with the reply, “Is it Easter already?” This breaks my heart. We have forgotten how to mourn. And yet mourning is not faithlessness. Jesus Himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus— even though He knew He would raise him. Grief is not the enemy of faith; it is the soil in which faith learns to cling. Lent teaches us what the world refuses to say aloud: we deserve death. Sin is not a misunderstanding or a weakness—it is a condition that leads to the grave. Ash Wednesday places that truth on our foreheads in the simplest of words: Remember that you are dust, and to dust
you shall return.
And yet Lent is not despair. It is precisely here—at the foot of the Cross—that the Gospel speaks its strongest word. Christ does not save us by avoiding death. He saves us by entering it, bearing it, and conquering it from the inside. His death does not merely inspire us; it confirms and releases us from death itself. The Cross is not empty. Christ is on it—giving Himself fully—so that death would no longer have the final word over us. Only those who have learned to mourn can truly rejoice. Only those who have faced the Cross can sing honestly at the empty tomb. Lent prepares us for Easter not by dimming the joy, but by deepening it—by grounding it in what Christ has actually done for us.
This is why the Church does not rush past Good Friday. We wait. We repent. We listen. We receive. And in doing so, we are given a joy that does not fade, because it is not built on denial but on redemption. I invite you to begin this holy journey with us: Ash Wednesday — February 18 Services at 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM, both with Holy Communion. Come and receive the ashes. Come and hear the Word of the Cross. Come and be marked not for despair, but for hope—hope that has passed through death and emerged victorious in Christ.
In Christ, who has died—and therefore given us life,
Pastor Quick
