Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
In the highlands of Armenia, a figure is rising above the earth — a two hundred fifty two foot statue of Jesus Christ, set upon Mount Hatis outside Yerevan. Backed by a former politician and businessman, the monument reaches toward something ancient in a country that has held Christianity close for seventeen centuries. There is something worth sitting with in that impulse — the human need to make faith visible, monumental, impossible to overlook.
Closer to home, a quieter but sharper question surfaced this week. MSNBC anchor Katy Tur drew significant criticism for challenging the idea that rights are God-given, a claim made by House Speaker Mike Johnson. The exchange reminded us how much depends on the story we tell about where human dignity begins — whether it descends from something sacred, or rises from something we construct together.
And in Louisiana, two new laws now allow churches to remove protesters who disrupt services, passed in the wake of a widely publicized incident in Minnesota. It raises a tension that has never fully resolved itself — the sacred space and the public square, sanctuary and accountability, the right to worship and the right to be heard.
That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
