Welcome to The Light, where we pause together and consider what the day is asking of us.
A shadow fell this week over the home of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, when an unknown caller falsely reported gunfire at her Virginia residence in what authorities are calling a swatting attempt. No one was harmed, but the incident reminds us how vulnerability lives even at the highest altitudes of public life, and how easily fear can be weaponized against another human being.
From intimidation to remembrance, the Museum of the Bible is marking America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary with a new collection of exhibits exploring the role of scripture in the nation's founding. Among them, a theater production centered on the faith of George Washington, inviting visitors to sit with the question of what animates a people, and what they carry forward across centuries.
And in Atlanta, Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell found himself standing in the quiet aftermath of the pandemic, looking at a church that had been emptied and scattered. Rather than chasing what was lost, he chose to ask what might be possible now, a posture that speaks to something essential about renewal, that it rarely looks like recovery.
That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
