Welcome to The Light, where we pause to consider what the day is asking of us.
A new Gallup survey finds that most Americans still believe the nation would be better off if it were more religious, even as fewer adults than a decade ago view religion as a positive force in their daily lives. It is a quiet tension worth sitting with — longing for something, and yet drifting from it.
That longing for meaning finds one of its most intimate expressions in the work of planting a church. Matt Smethurst and Ligon Duncan reflect this week on what it truly costs to build a worshipping community from nothing — the calling, the core team, the slow cultivation of trust. It is, they suggest, less a project than a vocation.
And then there is the Marginalian's gentle reminder about our mothers — that they are neither saints nor saviors, but simply people who loved us as fully as their own wounds allowed. To see a mother clearly, in all her beautiful limitation, may be one of the most quietly revolutionary acts of grace available to us.
That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
