2. DOCTORS WHO SUPPORT CANADA'S 'ASSISTED DYING' REGIME SAY IT'S GONE TOO FAR
from: LiveAction
SYNOPSIS: Two University of Toronto psychiatrists, Dr. Gary Rodin and Dr. Madeline Li, have criticized Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program, arguing that it has deviated from its original intent as a "last resort." The doctors express concern that the current system lacks adequate requirements for careful reflection, noting that patients are sometimes approved for assisted death due to poverty or loneliness rather than purely medical necessity.
Since the removal of the "reasonably foreseeable death" requirement in 2021, Canada has experienced the fastest-growing rate of assisted death in the world, leading to fears that the process is being used as a cost-saving measure. The authors highlight that many clinicians now act merely as a "conduit" for patient requests, often deferring entirely to the patient's own assessment of their suffering rather than providing necessary clinical guidance. Through personal experience, the psychiatrists illustrate that counseling and support can change a patient’s perspective on the value of their life, suggesting that the medical community must do more to address the psychological needs of the suffering.
Thank God that even pro-assisted-death doctors are realizing they have opened Pandora's box and now must bring it back under control. Assisted death is not the same as pain relief when a person is actually dying.
3. RUSSIAN FORCES DAMAGE 2,161 CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES IN UKRAINE
from: RISU
SYNOPSIS: As of late September 2026, Russian aggression has damaged 2,161 cultural heritage sites and 2,665 cultural institutions across Ukraine. The damage includes significant losses to infrastructure, such as 1,327 community centers, 917 libraries, 140 museums, and numerous theaters and educational institutions. The Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Kherson regions have sustained the highest concentration of destruction to cultural sites.
Recent attacks have impacted protected areas, including the Saint Sophia Cathedral and its buffer zone in Kyiv, which are recognized as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Tetiana Berezhna, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy and Minister of Culture, emphasized that documenting these crimes is essential to holding Russia accountable and preserving remaining museum collections. Data collection remains difficult in temporarily occupied territories, meaning the total scale of destruction to Ukraine’s cultural heritage is likely underreported.
Pray for the restoration and preservation of Ukraine's cultural identity which Russia is systematically trying to destroy.
SYNOPSIS: Using the biblical story of Nehemiah as an allegory, author Katy Faust argues that society must rebuild the moral "walls" surrounding the family to protect children's well-being. The author contends that the three foundational walls—permanence, complementarity, and monogamy—have been dismantled in favor of adult desires, leading to negative outcomes for children. The movement Them Before Us advocates for re-centering child-protective policies, arguing that children have a fundamental right to be raised by their own mother and father.
To restore these protections, the organization proposes legal reforms, such as ending no-fault divorce, rejecting the normalization of polyamory, and prioritizing biological bonds in family law. The Greater Than Campaign is presented as a coalition of leaders and organizations committed to fighting for these traditional values despite political pressure and public opposition. The text concludes that society thrives when adults sacrifice for children, and it calls for a return to a moral order where children’s needs are held as greater than adult autonomy.
Ask the Lord for adults to form and preserve intact marriages that put the needs and rights of their children before the desires of the adults.
5. WORRIES GROW THAT DISABILITY SERVICES COULD BECOME 'IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCESS'
from: Disability Scoop
SYNOPSIS: A recent survey by ANCOR reveals a crisis in the disability services sector, with 85% of providers reporting severe staffing shortages. Due to the workforce shortage, 55% of providers are turning away new referrals, and many are cutting back on essential programs like residential and home-based care. The industry faces compounding financial instability due to $1 trillion in federal Medicaid cuts, leaving many providers unable to expand or sustain current services.
Barbara Merrill, CEO of ANCOR, warned that these crisis conditions have become the norm, creating a fragile system with no remaining cushion to absorb further shocks. Provider challenges are further exacerbated by federal immigration enforcement, which impacts the 30% of the direct care workforce who are immigrants, and ongoing delays in Medicaid payments. Experts warn that if recruitment issues persist, critical disability services may technically exist but will become impossible to access in practice for those who need them most.
Pray for Christians to take action to help disabled people as the U.S. and state governments are running out of money to provide for them.
6. THE THREE DRINKS COMMON TO THOSE WHO LIVE TO 100
from: Retirement Media
SYNOPSIS: Blue Zones researcher Dan Buettner identifies three simple drinks commonly consumed by people who live to be 100: purified water, black coffee, and red wine. Purified water is the most essential habit for healthy ageing, with experts recommending six to seven glasses daily to prevent dehydration and support overall physical function. Black coffee is recommended in moderation (one to two cups, finished by noon) to reap benefits like antioxidants and reduced disease risk without disrupting sleep or relying on unhealthy additives.
While some centenarian populations drink moderate amounts of red wine with meals, the practice carries health risks, and experts caution against interpreting this as a "prescription" for everyone. The article emphasizes that longevity is not just about specific drinks but is heavily influenced by social connection, consistent physical movement, and avoiding the ultra-processed habits of modern life. The conservative Christian community in Loma Linda, California, proves that living to 100 is possible without coffee or wine, highlighting that purpose, faith, and community are the true foundations of a long, healthy life.
Thank the Lord for these three drinks, three easy steps, plus purpose, faith, and community to slow down the process of ageing.
7. TEEN FOUNDER BUILDS FOUR ACCESSIBLE TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS
from: Disabled World
SYNOPSIS: This information comes from Shriyan Avadhanula, a 16-year-old student and technology builder in Virginia. In it he describes four projects he has built, each aimed at a different barrier to participation. Scholark is a free college-planning platform that has served more than 10,000 users. Capital Mastery offers 16 finance career pathways and more than 80 free credentials. DataShadow is a personal-data model, backed by a U.S. provisional patent filing, that is built around informed and reversible consent. OpenLens evaluates smart glasses through simulation, digital twins, and local-first testing.
All four projects start from one question: who is being left out by the way a system is built right now? The piece is useful because it goes beyond general statements about inclusion. It names specific failure points, including missing captions, poor color contrast, inaccessible spreadsheets, timed tasks, and devices marketed as accessible that were never tested by disabled users. Students with disabilities, their families, older adults weighing assistive wearables, and anyon16-year-old studente concerned about how health or accommodation data is handled will find practical points here. The author is also candid about the limits of his own work, and his projects have been covered by outlets including The Times of India and Government Technology.
Praise God for Shriyan Avadhanula, this bright 16-year-old student, who has invented four accessible technology platforms for people with various disabilities.
As I was pondering how to write about the current lack of initiative among many in the West, I came across this headline's article. What does "Agency" really mean? Here are a few excerpts from the article: "Agency is the ability to look at a situation and believe there’s something you can do about it. One of the things I’ve noticed about people with high agency is that they don’t necessarily have better circumstances. They simply see more possibilities within the circumstances they have."
"They don’t necessarily have more resources. They’re often just better at figuring out what to do with the resources in front of them. It’s the way they seemed to view obstacles. The obstacle wasn’t a stop sign. It was a problem to solve. And sometimes solving it meant doing something that wasn’t in the conventional playbook. That’s agency. Agency means thinking for yourself. You can’t give someone agency. You can show them possibilities, challenge their assumptions, help them see another door. They have to decide to walk through it."
For several decades now, young people have been trained to depend on the government and government-funded hospitals, clinics, schools, colleges and universities for things previous generations had to provide for themselves. When I was growing up in the 1950s, we had a large garden that I had to dig up with a shovel to prepare for planting, then pull the weeds, water the garden, and pick the crops, and mow lawns to pay my clothes and school fees: I had my own lawn care business. My Mom canned or froze enormous quantities of food to provide for her six children. She sewed pajamas for us, skirts and dresses for the girls, and shirts for the boys. If we had to go to the doctor or the dentist, we paid cash for it on the spot. We walked to school and back, made and brought our lunches – a sandwich and an apple – to school in a brown paper bag. If we decided to go to college or university, we worked our way through. I started a tailor-made clothing business, got married in a custom-made silk suit, and borrowed only a bare minimum for college so I could pay off the loans in just a few years after graduation.
(← click) In 1912, just before my parents were born, most local public school students were preparing to enter the work force – few continued through 12th grade and even fewer went on to higher education – so by age 13 or 14, they were well-educated to be responsible citizens fully capable of participating in society. I must confess that with my university degree in history, political science, world geography and foreign languages, even I can't answer many of the questions in this 8th grade exam.
But now, many children don't learn basic housekeeping, gardening or hands-on life skills. They can ride a bus for free to and from school, get free breakfasts and lunches in school, subsidized or free "healthcare" – contraceptives and abortions so they can freely "sleep around" with whomever they wish, go to higher education on loans of tens or even over a hundred thousand dollars, sliding through these institutions, many with only "fluff" degrees in subjects that won't provide a living wage. They're spoon-fed 20-second sound bites of pseudo-information on their smartphones to which they're addicted. If they're out of range of WiFi or a cell tower, they become entirely paralyzed, lost and helpless. In short, they haven't aquired agency to think and act on their own.
This dependency on the government was especially impressed on me during our 17 years of missionary service in Russia. People automatically expected some vague "they" to provide all sorts of things and services... for free. A curious feature of the Russian language is the unnamed "They" – one doesn't need to even use the word "They" to start a sentence, simply say: "Ought to give free medical care" or "Should care for the disabled" or "Must provide free education through college or university." The unnamed subject of these sentences was, of course, "The government." As missionaries, we as "rich Westerners" should give them free Bibles, theological training, and financial support for their pastors. So "The West" had replaced "The government" in their thinking. One Russian told me sadly, "We have unlearned how to work."
For several years after we returned from Russia, I volunteered as a job counsellor in low-income neighborhoods. This experience showed me how much unemployed people have "unlearned how to work." Several times, they told me: "All I need is to show the people at the unemployment office that I've applied for 3 jobs, so I can get my check." They have lost their "agency," their adult independence, and have become dependent on the government. That is the norm for many people today. How can this have happened in America?
For centuries after Christ was on earth, His followers practiced genuine Christian "charity" – agape-love. In the KJV version, 1 Cor. 13 uses the word "charity" for "agape" which means divine, selfless love for others. The Apostle Paul, on the way to Jerusalem to be arrested and sent prisoner to Rome, called the elders of the church at Ephesus together and told them – "I coveted no one's silver, or gold, or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities, and to those who were with me. In all things I gave you an example, that so laboring you ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Yesous, that he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive'" (Acts 20:33-35). Paul also wrote to the church in Thessalonica – "For even while we were with you, we gave you this command: If anyone is unwilling to work, he shall not eat" (2 Thess. 3:10).
In my article "SEEK THE WELFARE OF THE CITY" you can learn how the Early Church put these teachings into practice by building hospices for the poor and elderly, hospitals for the sick, and orphanages for the street kids. The Church, not the state, balanced Christians' personal charity with individual responsibility and "agency." But in the 7th and 8th centuries Constantinople and much of southern Europe that had been under Christian rule, with the Muslim conquest, Christians were under pressure to adopt Islam. There was a special tax on the "dhimmi," non-Muslims, to either convert or pay this tax, or at worst... death. Also, Christians were not allowed to have any social outreach minitries, at best only worship within the four walls of the remaining churches. And after WW1, with the end of the Ottoman (Muslim Turkish) Empire, communism rose up and began demanding the same sort of submission to the atheistic state.
Today we see that these two worldviews, Marxism and Islam, are becoming more openly allied. You might wonder how an atheistic ideology and a theistic religion could be allies: both share the same spiritual essence – they deny that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. we read in 1 John 4:2-3 – "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus is the Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit who doesn't confess that Jesus is the Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is the spirit of the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that it comes. Now it is in the world already." That shared spirit between Marxism and Islam is Antichrist.
In the middle of the 20th century, Western society also "flipped the script." In place of church-established schools, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices and orphanages, with the post-war "baby boom" we needed more schools right away and various denominations or local school boards didn't have the funds, so the U.S. government offerred to subsidize the new construction projects. And I distinctly remember in junior high school the government promising they wouldn't interfere with the curriculum of schools. But later they felt the "need" to set up the U.S. Department of Education... and as they say, "the rest is history" – federal "guidelines" were established that soon became rules in order to receive federal aid. In the 1970s, WW2 veterans began retiring, many had war injuries, needed hospitalization, and church-established hospitals couldn't handle the growing needs, so again the government stepped in. Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran and Baptist hospitals were bought out and became city- and state-owned hospitals. Christianithy is being shoved to the sidelines.
So by now, people in the West automatically think that's the way things ought to be: "what is" has morphed to "what ought to be. "(Unspoken subject) Ought to give free medical care" or "_______ Should provide free education," etc. The default way of thinking now is "let the government do it." And the First Amendment's guarantee of "freedom of religious expression" has morphed into "freedom of religion as long as you keep it to yourself or inside your church building" – just like it was in the Ottoman Empire, the USSR and still is in Russia today. What is the answer? We must be unafraid to boldly confess our faith. We must insist on our God-given right to publicly express in word and action our Christian beliefs and morals! We cannot shrink back! This is why we've developed "The ARC" concept, the Agape Restoration Community.
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Where does the concept of "philanthropy" come from? Where did we get the idea of erecting hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly and infirm? Today we might think that these institutions were created by billionaires who made their money off railroads, steel mills or the stock market, or perhaps the government dreamed them up. But the historical fact is that these institutions for the public well-being were created during the one-thousand-year-long Byzantine Christian Empire. Only later did these ideas take root in Western Europe, and from there to the rest of the world.