Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
In Oregon, a Christian mother has been permitted to move forward with adoption after the state initially denied her application because she declined, on religious grounds, to affirm LGBT ideology. The case draws a quiet but consequential line between state process and personal conscience, and asks what it truly means to welcome a child into a home.
From that question of domestic faith, we turn to the international stage, where President Trump has nominated Cissie Graham Lynch, daughter of Franklin Graham and granddaughter of Billy Graham, to serve as ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The role has gone without a Senate-confirmed voice since the beginning of his second term, and her appointment signals a particular vision of how America intends to carry that conversation into the world.
And from the realm of law, an Afghan national living in Texas has become the first person removed from the United States under a long-dormant special court for alien terrorists, established under the Clinton administration and now awakened. What it means to revive old instruments of power, and who bears the weight of their revival, lingers in the air long after the news cycle moves on.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
