SAN FRANCISCO—This year marks the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love—a summer that quickly turned into a winter of discontent, rife with drug overdoses, sexually transmitted diseases, and other miseries. The deteriorating Haight-Ashbury scene proved fertile ground for the Jesus Movement, as disillusioned hippies professed faith in Christ. Many, now old, remember those weird and wonderful days.

In a news week consumed with the ugly convulsions in a Senate race in Alabama, my mind keeps returning to the red roses in a tiny church in Texas.

Have you seen the images?

The members of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, turned the site of a madman’s massacre in their little sanctuary into a moving memorial to the 26 churchgoers cut down during morning worship on Nov. 5.

The Museum of the Bible will impress you with its scale and amenities, but not with its evangelism. 

Located two blocks from the National Mall, the brand-new museum showcases its 430,000-square-foot building, historical artifact collections, and $42 million worth of cutting-edge technology to the public for the first time on Friday.

In Washington, D.C., at the end of October, the Museum of the Bible was preparing to open its giant golden doors for a Nov. 17 debut. The museum, two blocks off the National Mall, promises to draw big audiences to its collection, which purports to be one of the greatest private Biblical collections on display for the public.

Evangelist Billy Graham celebrates his 99th birthday Tuesday, surrounded by family. “As a family, we are just so very grateful that he is still with us,” Graham’s son Franklin said in a statement on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website. “His mind is good, but he’s quieter these days. He can’t see or hear well, but his health is stable.

Next month Hanukkah, a minor Jewish holiday, will get major attention because of its proximity to Christmas. On the eight evenings of Hanukkah (Dec. 12-19 this year), some Jewish children can look forward to a slow stream of presents rather than a rushing torrent on Christmas morning: Not a bad deal.

Five hundred years after Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation, the cold creep of atheism has frozen much of Europe—but the continent’s longest-serving and most powerful Western leader still holds a candle of faith. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor for the past 12 years and likely the next four as well, has said, “I believe in God, and religion is also my constant companion, and has been for the whole of my life. We as Christians should above all not be afraid of standing up for our beliefs.” Merkel, now 63, was a preacher’s kid: Her father was a Lutheran pastor.