Welcome to The Light, your quiet-hour reflection.
A new Gallup survey finds that while most Americans still consider behaviors like gambling and having children outside of marriage morally acceptable, support for those views has fallen meaningfully in just the past year, suggesting a subtle but real shift in how the country is weighing its moral compass.
From shifting values to recovered voices, a Latin scholar in Germany has unearthed two sermons written by Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century theologian whose thought shaped Western Christianity, found quietly waiting in a Polish monastery. The sermons concern the Witch of Endor, that strange and haunting figure from the Hebrew scriptures, and remind us that wisdom, once buried, has a way of returning.
And there is something that demands our attention in Nigeria, where Fulani Ethnic Militia groups continue targeting Christian communities in the Middle Belt and the South. Journalists and commentators have covered northern Nigeria's extremist violence with care, yet this parallel suffering moves through the world largely unseen, raising hard questions about which lives we choose to witness and which we allow to disappear into silence.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
