“TODAY” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie said “I still believe” as she delivered a heartfelt Easter video message at a New York church service Sunday.
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In a vulnerable speech, Guthrie spoke candidly about her struggle with her faith as she wrestles with the unknown surrounding her mother’s disappearance.
It has been two months since Nancy Guthrie, 84, vanished from her Tucson, Arizona, area home, sparking a massive search and national concern.
“I see a bright vision of the day when heaven and Earth pass away because they are one, on Earth as it is in heaven,” Guthrie said in the closing of her Easter message for Good Shepherd New York church. “When we celebrate today, this is what we celebrate, and I celebrate, too. I still believe. And so I say with conviction, ‘Happy Easter.’”
Guthrie spoke about Christians’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection and how humans still have moments of “deep disappointment with God” and “the feeling of utter abandonment.”
“Recently, though, in my own season of trial, I have wondered, I have questioned whether Jesus really ever experienced this particular wound that I feel,” she said. “This grievous and uniquely cruel injury of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and answers withheld.”
“In those darkest moments,” she continued, “I have thought bitterly, and perhaps irreverently, that I have stumbled upon a feeling that Jesus did not know.”
Guthrie said it’s not wrong to “challenge our God with questions,” and through it comes “a portal of revelation, the imparting of truth and wisdom.”
A comfort for believers, she said, is “that our God has felt those feelings from a perspective of humanity.”
“Perhaps this is too dark a message to share on Easter morning, but I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain and, yes, death,” she said. “It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful.”
“So I close my eyes this morning and I feel the sunshine,” she said.
Guthrie spoke one day before she’s set to return to the “TODAY” show.
In an interview with Hoda Kotb late last month, she said she believes returning to the show is “part of my purpose right now.”
“I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back because it’s my family,” Guthrie said about returning to work. “I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’ll belong anymore, but I would like to try. I would like to try.”
Meanwhile, the investigation to find her mother continues.
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing Feb. 1 after she didn’t show up at a friend’s house for virtual church services, authorities said. She was last seen the previous night around 9:45 p.m. after having had dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s home.
Authorities have described the case as a possible kidnapping or abduction. The Pima County Sheriff’s Office hasn’t publicly specified a motive.