Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour for reflection.
Across the country, the pro-life movement finds itself in unfamiliar territory. As the Trump administration weighs new rules around in vitro fertilization, advocates who have long centered their cause on protecting life are now confronting a quiet arithmetic — that IVF creates and discards embryos at a scale that challenges their own convictions.
That tension between belief and practice carries naturally into a question as old as prayer itself. Why does God seem to answer some petitions and fall silent on others? Theologians and ordinary people alike wrestle with whether divine silence signals indifference or something more mysterious — a patience, perhaps, that we have not yet learned to trust.
And yet for many, the wound runs deeper than unanswered prayer. A growing body of voices describes leaving faith not because God failed them, but because the church did — because the very institution meant to embody grace became a source of harm. When the pulpit becomes associated with abuse, the exodus is not simply from a building, but from belonging itself.
These are not easy questions. They ask us to hold conviction and doubt, love and injury, all at once. That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
