Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour for reflection.
In September of two thousand twenty six, Kevin DeYoung addressed a private gathering of Gospel Coalition leaders on the question of Christian nationalism. Drawing from Charles Hodge's systematic theology, he offered a framework for how Christians might faithfully engage — and resist — the conflation of national identity with sacred belonging.
That tension between faith and its distortions runs through another story this week, a sobering account of a lay worship pastor in Ohio whose life unraveled under the weight of greed. The body-cam footage tells a story older than any sermon — a man in a sweatshirt reading God-Sized Vision, undone by something far smaller than God.
And then there is Abraham Lincoln, who at thirty-two years old wrote that he was the most miserable man living. What is remarkable is not the darkness itself, but what grew from it — how that intensity of suffering became the soil for a life of uncommon moral clarity and endurance.
Three stories, one quiet thread: the distance between who we present ourselves to be, and who we are in the unguarded hours. That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
