Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin on NBC’s ‘Today,’ Monday, April 6, 2026
Savannah Guthrie, co-host of NBC’s “Today,” returned to the airwaves Monday after releasing an emotional message Sunday concerning the resurrection of Jesus, even as her mother Nancy Guthrie remains missing after being abducted from her Arizona home.
“We are so glad you started your week with us, and it is good to be home,” the anchor said after a two-month hiatus since the unsolved disappearance of Nancy took place on Feb. 1.
“Well, ready or not, here we go. Let’s do the news,” she continued as she got into the latest events with Operation Epic Fury in Iran.
BREAKING: Savannah Guthrie says “it’s good to be home” as she returns to Today for the first time in over two months after her mother’s abduction
Guthrie, 54, returned to the desk at Rockefeller Center just before 7 a.m. during a short handoff with affiliates
Savannah Guthrie also went outside the studio to read signs from supporters while sobbing, saying: “These signs are so beautiful, you guys have been so beautiful. I’ve received so many letters, so much kindness to me and my whole family. We feel it, we feel your prayers.”
Savannah Guthrie and her mother Nancy
On Sunday, Savannah Guthrie posted a lengthy video on social media in which she discussed the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus.
WATCH:
NEW: Savannah Guthrie releases emotional Easter message amid the disappearance of her mother, says she still believes.
Guthrie says she has questioned if Jesus ever experienced the specific pain she feels regarding the disappearance of her mother.
Good morning, everybody. Happy Easter. And Easter is happy. It is flowers and pastels and baby bunnies. It is sunshine and joy and hope.
It is rebirth and second chances and new life and fresh starts. It is the most important day of the year for all of us who believe, even more than Christ’s birth. More than his death, his resurrection, his second birth into a permanent life. That is what is most crucial to us. His revival and resurrection mean the same for us.
We celebrate today the promise of a new life that never ends in death. But standing here today, I have to tell you There are moments in which that promise seems irretrievably far away, when life itself seems far harder than death. These moments of deep disappointment with God, the feeling of utter abandonment. For most of us, there will come a time in our life when these feelings hold sway.
In our tradition, we are taught to take comfort in the fact that our friend Jesus, in His short life, experienced every single emotion that we humans can feel. That His taking on the form of humanity made Him not a distant observer to our pain but a hands-on experiencer of it. 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, this grievous and uniquely cruel injury of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and answers withheld.
In those darkest moments, I have thought bitterly and perhaps irreverently that I have stumbled upon a feeling that Jesus did not know. After all, don’t the Gospel stories recount Jesus informing His disciples of His destiny – that He had been sent to die to ultimately be raised up? They didn’t get it, but He did. He at least knew His fate. And yes, it grieved Him deeply, to the point of shedding tears of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.
But still, He knew the ending. He knew the plan. There would be suffering, but then resurrection.
Savannah Guthrie and her mother Nancy Guthrie
It isn’t wrong to think such thoughts, to challenge our God with questions. God does not ask us to be stoics with standards of pain with Zen-like remove or shallow sloganeering about the hard battle God gives to His toughest soldiers. Our questions to God, our wrestling with God – this is his opportunity. For through our authenticity and vulnerability comes a portal of revelation, the imparting of truth and wisdom.
And so it went for me, this portal opening as I stared at yet another incongruently luminous desert sunset. Amidst my spirit’s utter darkness. Suddenly I remembered the grave. I remembered 3 days in the grave. No one talks much about that.
We focus mostly on Easter. Of course we do. We cut to the happy ending and the joy of Sunday morning. And yes, we do observe the Friday before, the agony of crucifixion. We mourn by candlelight that darkest night.
But after Jesus died, after he breathed his last, what did he actually know? On the cross, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That is the anguished cry of someone who does not know the answers. Where did his soul and his spirit go in those days in between? And what was he thinking? Did he think his time in the grave would be a day or two or 1,000 years?
In the grave, did 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, right, and her mother Nancy Guthrie
As humans living on this earth now, We are all suspended in that moment of uncertainty, not 3 days, but thousands of years between his cross and our resurrection with him. Our faith gives us a spiritual conviction that we will be reborn, that God will redeem this pain, that every tear will be wiped away, that our Easter is coming. But we live viscerally In the meantime, the mean time of feeling unsure, lost, abandoned, disappointed, enraged, forgotten, our comfort is that our God has felt those feelings from a perspective of humanity, that He has compassion on us, and that He promises, if not immediate answers, His sweet presence. He promises closeness to the brokenhearted. Somehow, miraculously, his loving and gentle presence that makes the mean time less mean.
Perhaps, 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. It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful. It is all the brighter because it is so desperately needed.
So I close my eyes this morning and I feel the sunshine. 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. I still believe.