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June 30: When Darkness Couldn't Silence the Music

Two moments. Forty years apart.

On June 30, 1934, Adolf Hitler launched the Night of the Long Knives, proving how easily evil can disguise itself as order.

Forty years later, on June 30, 1974, Alberta Williams King—the mother of Martin Luther King Jr.—sat at the organ of Ebenezer Baptist Church, playing The Lord's Prayer, when a gunman opened fire.

These tragedies were separated by continents, generations, and scale, yet both reveal the same ancient temptation: to forget that every human being bears the image of God.

Today's Moments Almanac reflects on history's darkest moments, the hope found in Genesis 1:27, the wisdom of W. H. Auden, and the Gospel's answer to the endless cycle of hatred.

Because the darkness may interrupt the music...

...but it cannot silence the Kingdom.

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Bitterness rarely announces itself as bitterness.

It often disguises itself as justice, hurt, or the quiet conviction that we have every right to hold on just a little longer.

In this spoken-word episode of Scattered Moments, Matt Tullos explores the devastating path resentment can carve through hearts, families, friendships, and even churches—and the greater invitation Christ offers at His table.

Drawing from Hebrews 12:15 and Ephesians 4:31–32, this poetic reflection reminds us that forgiveness is not pretending the wound never happened. It is choosing to lay our bitterness beside the broken body of Christ and allowing Him to make all things new.

If you've been carrying old hurts, unresolved anger, or the weight of unforgiveness, may this episode encourage you to discover the freedom found only in Jesus.

"See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled." — Hebrews 12:15

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On June 29, two very different fires tell the same story.

In 1613, London's Globe Theatre—the stage that gave the world Shakespeare's greatest plays—burned to the ground in less than an hour. The building was lost, but the words escaped the flames. Centuries later, we still speak many of the phrases first heard beneath its thatched roof.

Two hundred forty-eight years later, Elizabeth Barrett Browning breathed her last in Florence. Her body had been weakened by decades of illness, but her vision remained clear. In one of her most beloved poems, she reminded us that "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God."

In this episode of Moments Almanac, we explore what survives when fragile vessels fail—whether a theater of timber or a body of flesh. Through Scripture, history, poetry, and hymn, we're reminded that God places eternal treasure in ordinary jars of clay.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:7
Hymn: O Worship the King by Robert Grant (1833)

Some things the fire simply cannot touch.