Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
In Tennessee, Pastor Greg Locke stood before his congregation this week carrying the kind of weight no parent should ever know. His twenty-year-old son Evan is gone, lost to a drug overdose, and through tears he spoke plainly: there is no grief deeper than losing a child. In that rawness, something universal opened — a reminder that suffering does not spare the faithful, and that honest mourning is itself a form of courage.
From grief, we turn toward a different kind of reckoning with strength. Former NFL players Patrick Hill and Chandler Brayboy have partnered with Mercy Ships, stepping away from the identity of physical dominance to explore something quieter — caregiving, service, presence. They are discovering, as many do, that the body's real power may lie not in force, but in the willingness to tend to another.
And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened investigations into more than two dozen school districts over compliance with state laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments and allowing school prayer. The move raises old and unresolved questions about where the sacred and the civic are permitted to meet, and who decides.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
