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“Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie used the occasion of Easter to ponder themes of faith, doubt, and the unknown, as the search for her mother, Nancy Guthrie, continues after more than two months.
Her reflections were part of a digital Easter service hosted by Good Shepherd New York on YouTube. During the gathering, Guthrie shared her heartfelt thoughts on coping with sorrow and unanswered questions during this particularly challenging time.
Nancy Guthrie, who is 84, disappeared after reportedly being taken from her bedroom in northern Tucson, Arizona, at around 2 a.m. on February 1. When authorities arrived, they discovered a faint line of blood droplets leading from the front entrance to the driveway. The back doors were ajar, and a doorbell camera had been removed.
Police later uncovered security footage from the home, capturing an unidentified masked man at the doorstep. The evidence trail appears to have concluded at the driveway, leaving her current location a mystery.
Savannah Guthrie’s poignant Easter message touches on themes of faith and uncertainty as her mother, now missing for 63 days, remains unlocated. (Good Shepherd New York YouTube)
Guthrie acknowledged that Easter’s promise of hope and new life can feel distant as she faces the uncertainty surrounding her mother’s disappearance.
“There are moments in which that promise seems irretrievably far away, when life itself seems far harder than death,” Guthrie said. “These moments of deep disappointment with God, the feeling of utter abandonment.”
Guthrie said that in her recent “season of trial,” she questioned whether Jesus experienced the same kind of uncertainty she now feels, particularly the pain of not knowing what comes next or why suffering is unfolding.
Savannah Guthrie poses alongside her mother Nancy Guthrie during a production break whilst hosting NBC’s “Today Show” live from Australia. (Don Arnold/WireImage)
“I have wondered – I have questioned – whether Jesus really ever experienced this particular wound that I feel, this grievous and uniquely cruel injury of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and answers withheld,” she said. “In those darkest moments I have thought, bitterly and perhaps irreverently, that I have stumbled upon a feeling that Jesus did not know.”
She said her perspective began to shift as she reflected on the period between the crucifixion and resurrection, a span she described as often overlooked but central to understanding faith in moments of uncertainty.
“After Jesus died, after he breathed his last, what did he actually know?” Guthrie said. “Did he think his time in the grave would be a day or two or a thousand years? In the grave, does his agony seem indefinite to him? That torment of uncertainty? The way indefinite pain can feel eternal? Perhaps he did know this feeling after all.”
Savannah Guthrie visits the Today show at Rockefeller Plaza in New York on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Guthrie said that realization helped her reframe her own experience, describing life as existing in a kind of “meantime” — a period marked by waiting, unanswered questions and the absence of clear resolution.
She said that in those moments, people can feel unsure, lost, abandoned, disappointed and forgotten, even as faith calls them to trust in a future they cannot yet see.
Despite that struggle, Guthrie said her faith remains rooted in the belief that God is present even without immediate answers, offering comfort not through certainty, but through presence.
“It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful,” Guthrie said. “It is all the brighter because it is so desperately needed.”
“So I close my eyes this morning and I feel the sunshine,” she continued. “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.”
“When we celebrate today, this is what we celebrate, and I celebrate, too,” she said. “I still believe. And so I say with conviction, happy Easter.”