Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
A pastor in Georgia is offering a word of grace to grieving families. Léonce Crump Jr. has said plainly that the Bible does not teach that suicide condemns a soul to hell. For those who have lost someone this way, that reframing carries enormous weight, and perhaps long-overdue comfort.
From grief, we move to something ancient and strange. Archaeologists have uncovered the oldest known evidence of human cannabis use, and the context is deeply ceremonial, woven into funerary ritual. It seems our ancestors reached for altered states not in recreation, but in the presence of death, seeking perhaps some passage between worlds.
And then there is a harder truth to sit with. Texas pastor Ronnie Goines, who walked free earlier this year after a grand jury found insufficient evidence in a sexual assault case, now faces a new civil lawsuit alleging he assaulted another woman just five months later. The institution of trust, when broken by those who hold it, leaves wounds that echo far beyond one congregation.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
