Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
In Kenya, a court has sentenced pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge to two hundred years in prison for the murders of one hundred ninety one people, followers who starved to death under his direction. It is a devastating reminder of how spiritual authority, when unmoored from conscience, can become an instrument of profound destruction.
From the courtroom to the cosmos, Carl Sagan's enduring invitation lingers with us still. NASA astrophysicist Natalie Batalha echoes his wonder, suggesting that we are the universe itself becoming aware of its own existence. To live with mystery, Sagan believed, is not weakness but a kind of sacred honesty.
And in South Sudan's Lakes State, churches are holding on amid deadly communal violence that has left dozens dead and hundreds of families displaced. Congregations there are doing what communities of faith have always done in the wreckage of conflict, gathering the scattered, tending the grieving, and keeping a door open in the darkness.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
