2. OBGYN DR.: WHY THE TENNESSEE MEDICAL ASSOCIATION DOESN'T SPEAK FOR ME OR MY PATIENTS
from: LiveAction
SYNOPSIS: Dr. Omar L. Hamada, a board-certified OB/GYN and family medicine physician, argues that an amicus brief filed by the Tennessee Medical Association (TMA) does not represent the views of all its members. The TMA’s brief challenges Tennessee’s Human Life Protection Act, claiming the law lacks clarity, which the author contends is a political argument rather than a medical necessity.
Dr. Hamada asserts that under current state law, treatments for ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and maternal emergencies are not classified as abortions, and that the medical standard of "reasonable medical judgment" provides adequate protection for doctors. He criticizes the TMA for filing the brief on a controversial topic without polling its membership, noting that the board-approved action does not reflect the consensus of many physicians who consider both the mother and the unborn child as patients. Dr. Hamada calls on the TMA to withdraw its participation in the legal brief, disclose the authorization process, and focus on providing clear, unified guidance to prevent confusion among hospitals and pharmacists.
Ask the Lord to stop this back-door effort of forcing doctors to violate their religious beliefs about the sanctity of every human life.
3. ORTHODOX BISHOPS OF BENELUX REAFFIRM SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE
from: RISU
SYNOPSIS: The Orthodox Episcopal Assembly of Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxemberg), led by Metropolitan Athenagoras of Belgium, reaffirmed its steadfast support for the Ukrainian people during its 33rd meeting in Brussels. The assembly strongly condemned the persecution of Christians globally and specifically denounced a deadly attack on an Orthodox church in Jordan. Hierarchs discussed the establishment of a “Commission of Trust” to ensure good governance and effectively address potential cases of sexual abuse within the Church.
The meeting highlighted advancements in Orthodox theological education, including new cooperation between the Apostle Paul Theological Institute and the Catholic University of Louvain. Participants welcomed the official recognition of the Orthodox Mission Authority (OZI) in the Netherlands and acknowledged the importance of recent dialogues with King Philippe of Belgium. The bishops finalized plans for future engagement, including a visit by Patriarch Daniel of Romania in May 2027 and potential youth festivals to celebrate upcoming anniversaries.
Thank God for the Orthodox Bishops of Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxemberg taking a firm public stand for cleaning up any cases of sexual abuse within the Church.
4. NOT HAPPY ENOUGH TO LIVE?
from: Them Before Us
SYNOPSIS: The company Herasight has introduced an embryo screening test designed to predict an individual's lifetime risk of depression, a move criticized as "embryo optimization" rather than a true medical treatment. Medical experts, including the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, have cautioned that such screening technology is currently unproven and lacks clinical validity. Critics argue that these tests commodify human life by encouraging parents to discard "undesirable" embryos based on genetic scores rather than treating existing health conditions.
The article emphasizes that all human beings' worth is inherent and that selecting against certain traits sends a dangerous message that individuals struggling with mental health issues are not worth living. Historical figures who lived with significant depression, such as Abraham Lincoln, J.K. Rowling, Buzz Aldrin, and Leo Tolstoy, are highlighted as examples of individuals who made immense contributions to society despite their struggles. The organization Them Before Us explains that children should be protected from the first moment of life and that society should focus on providing support for those with mental health challenges rather than eliminating them. Another article from Them Before Us, Frozen Embryos Have Double the Cancer Rate, tells that the freezing of embryos always increases the risk of cancer. IVF also kills (eventually destroys) all the unselected embryos, as well as often damaging those selected to be born. Adoption is better than IVF!
Pray for people to comprehend that frozen embryos are real human beings waiting to be born, not just medical experiments to satisfy the desires of adults.
5. SUPREME COURT TO HEAR CASE WITH BIG IMPLICATIONS FOR DISABILITY RIGHTS
from: Disability Scoop
SYNOPSIS: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, which challenges state requirements for private religious schools receiving public funding. The case centers on a Colorado preschool program that mandates non-discrimination policies based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity – including protections for students with disabilities – for all participating schools.
The Archdiocese of Denver and other plaintiffs sued, arguing that the protections for LGBTQ chidren violate the religious beliefs and First Amendment rights of Christians. Disability advocates, including the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and The Arc of the United States, warn that a ruling against the state could reframe necessary accommodations as "discrimination." Legal experts fear that a pro-plaintiff decision could undermine decades of progress by allowing disability rights, such as special education and reasonable accommodations, to be legally challenged.
Pray that all people will realize that these non-discrimination policies based on sexual orientation or gender identity are merely being used as a way to force Christian schools into violating their religious and ethical principles in the name of "progress."
6. VIOLENCE REPEATEDLY ERUPTS IN DEMENTIA CARE DESPITE WARNINGS, INSPECTIONS SHOW
from: National Public Radio
SYNOPSIS:Investigations show that physical violence between residents in nursing homes and memory care units is a persistent, largely preventable issue driven by dementia-related aggression and inadequate facility supervision. The tragic death of Attilio Cecchetto (on the right), who was fatally attacked by a roommate with a history of violence, highlights the dangers of failing to properly assess resident compatibility and manage behavioral triggers. Experts and researchers, such as dementia consultant Eilon Caspi, emphasize that most violent altercations are preceded by observable warning signs and unmet needs that staff often fail to address.
Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reveals that nursing homes are cited for resident-to-resident abuse more frequently than for any other form of neglect or exploitation. Families of victims, including those of Gladys Lynch and Linda Twiddy, have faced severe outcomes ranging from permanent injury to death due to facility negligence and a lack of effective security interventions. Critics argue that the long-term care industry frequently prioritizes profit over resident safety, leading to understaffed facilities where personnel are often undertrained in managing patients with cognitive disorders.
Ask the Lord what we as Christians must do to demonstrate our care for the demented and elderly in our cities and countries.
7. CHARLES SCHWAB AND DYSLEXIA: BUILDING AROUND THE WEAK SPOTS
from: Disabled World
SYNOPSIS: This paper examines how Charles Schwab, the founder of one of the largest brokerage firms in the United States, managed lifelong slow reading and a dyslexia diagnosis that did not arrive until he was 47, drawing on his own letter to The Wall Street Journal, his interview with David Rubenstein, the opening of his memoir Invested, and material from the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.
Rather than treating his career as proof that dyslexia is a hidden gift, it separates reading from analysis, judgment, and decision-making, and shows how Schwab's practice of hiring people who were strong where he was weak functioned as deliberate work design. The analysis matters for adults with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, for employers weighing workplace accommodations, and for anyone who has been told that a single weakness disqualifies them from leadership, because it offers a grounded way to judge capability by the work a role actually requires rather than by how quickly someone reads a document unaided.
Thank God for the courage of Charles Schwab to overcome his dyslexia by hiring the people whose strengths filled in for his disability, thus building a very successful business.
WHAT'S THE BIG FUSS ABOUT JUDE AND JEZEBEL?
The Apostle Jude is a puzzling character: in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 he's called the "brother" of the Lord along with James, who later became the leader of the church in Jerusalem after the other James, the Apostle, was killed by Herod. But we find no more details about Jude other than the above verses in Matthew and Mark and in the lists of the twelve Apostles where sometimes he is called Thaddeus. In his epistle, he begins by saying he wanted to write encouraging words about the faith once for all transmitted to the saints. But then he changes course, deciding rather to write about those who were distorting our common faith:
"For there are certain people who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, perverting the grace of our God into unbridled lust, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I desire to remind you, though you already know this, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who didn't believe. Angels who didn't keep their first domain, but deserted their own dwelling place, he has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, having, in the same way as these, given themselves over to sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, are set forth as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 1:3-7).
Jude is writing about ungodly people who've managed to sneak into the church, and begin distorting the liberty we have by the grace of God into perversion and unbridled lust. This isn't anything new: St. Paul also warned the leaders of the church in Ephesus – "I know that after my departure, vicious wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20:29-30). This is precisely what's been sprouting up in various churches and denominations in the last few decades. Their leaders might have attended seminary and gotten ordained into the ministry, but they have never walked the narrow road of repentance and striving toward holiness. Instead, they dress up their perversion, lust, and unnatural desire with religious jargon and pious phrases such as "love is love," "choice," "freedom in Christ," "inclusion," and "non-discrimination." You have likely seen churches decorated with rainbow banners and ordained men and women wearing rainbow-colored sashes or robes.
Our freedom in Christ – "liberty" – can be distorted into libertinism and license to commit sexual immorality, homosexual acts, and abortion, justifying one's actions by citing new laws that permit such behavior. We need to keep in mind what the Apostle Paul wrote – "'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are profitable. 'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things build up" (1 Corinthians 10:23). Recent changes in the laws regarding sexual conduct, marriage and divorce have legalized behavior that was formerly illegal: now "all things are lawful" but they are not profitable or constructive; instead, they are unprofitable and destructive for both the individuals and for society. "Living together" outside of marriage (fornicating) often doesn't last, or leads to unfaithfulness if a couple eventually marries, and/or easy, no-fault divorce. The toll it takes on children is terrible: one only has to study the heartbreaking statistics.
What about Jezebel? We read in Revelation 2:20-23 – "But I have this against you, that you tolerate your woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. She teaches and seduces my servants to commit sexual immorality, and to eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her into a bed, and those who commit adultery with her into great oppression, unless they repent of her works."
The author, the Apostle John, had first commended the church in Thyatira for its "love, faith, service, patient endurance, and good works" (v. 19), but all that does not excuse sexual immorality and adultery. In many liberal denominations, the pastors (often women) and people are engaged in social service and other good works, but also "tolerate Jezebel" – the notion that what really matters is the "social gospel" and one's private behavior is nobody else's business. "Social" morality cannot be separated from "personal" morality: it's not either-or, it's both-and.
Jeremiah 48:10 states – "Cursed be he who does the work of the Lord negligently; and cursed be he who keeps back his sword from blood." This verse is in the context of God's judgments on the pagan practices of the nations surrounding Israel, but also on Israel itself (v. 13). The kings and priests of Israel had let matters of morality slide, and so the people slid into the same sorts of pagan practices as the nearby nations: sexual immorality and child sacrifice (abortion: killing the unwanted products of immorality and incineratining the bodies of the babies) as an offering to Baal and Chemosh, the nearby pagan gods. And all the while, the religious leaders would negligently turn a blind eye. The same thing happens today when priests or pastors commit immoral acts: it's ignored or they're reassigned to another town, or they get just "a slap on the wrist" of two years' or just several months' leave of absence, then are moved in a different church where their behavior continues. No! They must be permanently removed from ministry!
"For what business is it of mine to judge people outside the church? Do you not judge those inside?" (2 Corinthians 5:12). "For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. If it begins first with us, what will happen to those who do not obey the gospel of God?" (1 Peter 4:17). When interacting with those outside the church, we shouldn't harshly judge or condemn them: we can't expect pagans to act like Christians! Instead, we must gently speak the truth in the love of God to imperfect, hurting human beings – you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.
But we must be firm with those within the church, especially the ordained clergy, who continue to violate the historical standards of Christian morality: "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even expose them. For the things which are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of. But all things, when they are exposed, are revealed by the light, for everything that is revealed is light" (Ephesians 5:11-13). And "For what if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? May it never be! Yes, let God be found true, but every man a liar. As it is written, 'That you might be justified in your words, And might prevail when you come into judgment'" (Romans 3:3-4). Sweeping scandals under the rug causes offense to both Christians and non-Christians, but upholding the faithfulness of God builds up the Body of Christ, the Church!
"He gave some to be Apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers, to equip the saints to do the work of ministering to build up the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature, perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-13).
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Private charity by individuals, churches, synagogues and other non-profit organizations should replace government welfare programs. Why? Because private charity is by nature more efficient! Such organizations (like ours) often operate on a totally or mostly volunteer basis, emphasize personal relationships with unemployed people, and have limited funds to dole out.