"He was like, 'I've been praying for a song like this,'" Lake said as he accepted the award for Song of the Year. "And then fast forward, we start leading this song together, and he starts saying things like, 'Man, I am a man of faith, but I've never had a song and a person, like, just give me permission to be so much more honest about my faith.'"

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Brandon Lake and Jelly Roll’s ‘Hard Fought Hallelujah’ Wins K-Love Awards Song of the Year - Michael Foust

Brandon Lake and Jelly Roll’s ‘Hard Fought Hallelujah’ Wins K-Love Awards Song of the Year , Michael Foust - Read breaking news headlies with a Christian perspective and commentary from Michael Foust.

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‘One of the most heartbreaking tragedies’: Gaza doctor’s last goodbye before nine children killed in airstrike​

Dr Alaa al-Najjar was at work when an indiscriminate Israeli strike destroyed her home, killing nine of her ten children, and her husband inleaving one son and her husband as survivors​

By Malak A Tantesh & Lorenzo Tondo, Reposted from The Guardian, May 25, 2025
In the early hours of Friday, as she did every day, Dr Alaa al-Najjar said goodbye to her 10 children before leaving the house. The youngest, Sayden, six months old, was still sleeping. And like every day, with war raging in Gaza and Israeli strikes landing just metres from her neighborhood in Khan Younis, Najjar worried about leaving them at home without her.
But Najjar, 35, had little choice. One of Gaza’s dwindling number of medics, a respected pediatrician at the Nasser medical complex, she had to go to work to care for injured babies who had barely survived Israeli attacks. She could never have imagined that that farewell to her family would be her last.
A few hours later, the charred bodies of seven of her children, killed by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis, arrived at her hospital. Two other bodies, including Sayden’s, remained under the rubble. Of her 10 children, only one had survived, along with their father, Hamdi al-Najjar, 40, also a doctor. Both are now in the hospital.

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Once, in a dry town where time felt stuck and paint peeled off the gas station signs, a man named Ray took to the corner of Main and Laurel to tell anyone who’d listen that he was chosen. A Star Child destined to rule Andromeda Galaxy. And he had come to earth to bring love, joy, and peace.


He wore dark wraparound sunglasses, a poncho scorched at the hem, and boots he claimed were Martian leather.

“The stars remember us,” he said, arms open like a man welcoming judgment. “But we forgot ourselves.”

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Most just shook their heads.


Until the day his Buick floated.


An ’87 LeSabre, rusted and duct-taped, lifted three feet off the pavement. No supports, no wires. Just hanging there like it belonged to a different kind of gravity.


That was when people began to believe.


Sheriff Matheson, who hadn’t believed in much since his wife died, froze mid-step and started whispering the Lord’s Prayer. Others wept. Some ran.


Ray didn’t call himself a god. Just in tune.

“They’re coming,” he said. “The First Cadre. But we have to prepare. This world hums too low.”

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He built a strange tower in his backyard: wires, mirrors, copper coils, and plastic gnomes with their faces sanded off.

“An antenna for cosmic consciousness,” he explained.

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The crowds grew. They called themselves the Andromeda Fellowship. They had chants, parties, custom T-shirts. Some claimed visions. Most just liked the sense that something bigger was happening.


But the Cadre never came.


Ray said the group was out of tune—too much beer, too much noise.

“We need clarity,” he said. “Higher frequencies. I need parts. Real ones.”

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He passed around jars for donations. He drew diagrams on napkins. He talked about gates, metadata, and “soul harmonics.”


And then he disappeared.


No goodbye. No farewell sermon. Just gone. The Buick too.


Weeks later, a few people found him on social media—on a beach somewhere expensive, cocktail in hand, a luxury car in the background. When asked about the Fellowship, he replied with a shrug emoji.


The tower rotted. The crowd thinned. Eventually, the Fellowship was gone.


Except one man stayed behind.


He wasn’t the most faithful or the loudest. Just a guy who’d been there when the Buick lifted. He’d seen it—seen everyone change. And then he’d seen it all collapse.


He kept returning to the empty yard. Not for answers. Just to sit. And think.


For a while, he listened to static on an old CB radio. Then one day, he turned it off. And didn’t turn it back on.


He took a job at the hardware store. Started helping the new pastor fix up the church building. No sermons, no spectacle—just folding chairs and coffee in the back.


Some nights, he reread the Bible. Slowly. No highlighter. No notes.


He came across a verse:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

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It didn’t feel accusatory. Just… true. Like a quiet kind of warning you only understand in hindsight.


He didn’t talk about Ray much. People didn’t ask.


But if someone new came through town asking what happened back then—about the floating car, the tower, the Fellowship—he’d just nod.


“Some folks want wonder more than they want truth,” he’d say.
Then he’d go back to stocking shelves.


Faith, he’d come to believe, isn’t built on what lifts off the ground. It’s built on what stays.

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