Good Morning! 

Ernest Bevin was a British statesman in the first half of the twentieth century. 

“A newspaper has three things to do,” he once wrote. “One is to amuse, another is to entertain and the rest is to mislead.” 

The New York Times is particularly good at the latter: 

 

  1. On the New York Times’ Terribly Simplistic View of the Family

From The Daily Citizen: 

If The New York Times, is anything, it’s predicable. They featured an op/ed recently on the status of the nuclear family and it was essentially the same article they have been publishing on the topic for decades. New words, same dismissive, simplistic message. 

This most recent piece is titled, “The Nuclear Family is No Longer the Norm. Good.” and they mean it as a hooray to the passage of an ideal that they believe has long needed to go away. But what The Grey Lady is doing is focusing on a fiction that never existed in reality, and now is praising its disappearance. Yes, it’s a parlor trick. 

Why? 

Because of their terribly simplistic definition of “nuclear family.” The Times reveals their shortsightedness right out of the gate, 

“Even two decades ago, Americans were increasingly moving away from the “mom, dad and two kids” family structure that corresponded with the norms and pop culture of the 1950s.” 

 

  1. NYC’s Top Doc Calls White Women ‘Birthing People,’ Calls Black and Hispanic Women ‘Mothers’

From the Post Millennial: 

Dr. Michelle Morse, the chief medical officer at New York City’s Department of Health, has received sharp criticism for describing pregnant women differently along lines of race, choosing to call pregnant white women “birthing people” while referencing pregnant women of color as “mothers” in a late March tweet. 

Since the city’s top doctor’s March 23 tweet, a DOH spokesman called Morse’s post an “oversight” and said “we apologize for inadvertently gendering Black and Puerto Rican birthing people,” according to the New York Post. 

Morse had been sharing a number of tweets in which she advocated for increased allocation of goods and services to women of color. A disproportionate number of them, Morse argued, had died either during or shortly after childbirth. 

Specifically, she pointed out that black and Puerto Rican mothers were suffering fatalities in birthing at a rate much higher than that of white women. To fix that, Morse suggested on Twitter increasing access to available doulas, a kind of specialized midwife, and other services to minority communities.  

 

  1. Walt Disney’s Dream Has Gone Up in Smoke, From Wonderful to ‘Woke’

From The Daily Citizen: 

The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to “entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.” 

But the decline of Disney’s once-iconic brand is becoming one of the saddest stories ever told. 

In just a few short weeks, Walt Disney’s dream has gone up in smoke, from wonderful to “woke.” 

The company has drifted from its mission of bringing families a magical, memorable experience through spectacular storytelling. Instead, Disney has ventured into politics, campaigning for whatever cause the Left has most recently started to champion. 

 

4. Pro-life group orchestrated police discovery of dead babies 

From World Magazine: 

Police on Thursday found the bodies of five aborted babies in the Washington, D.C., apartment of Lauren Handy, 28, one of nine pro-life activists arrested this week for entering an abortion facility in 2020 in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. A local news anchor on WUSA-TV called the story “bizarre and chilling,” while Handy’s neighbors told NBC News that it was “really messed up” and “horrifying” that there were “fetuses in someone’s house.” 

Handy is the director of activism at Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), a group founded in October 2021 by Terrisa Bukovinac, a self-described liberal, atheist pro-lifer. After news broke of the police recovering the remains of the aborted babies, PAAU around midnight on Friday morning posted a statement about the incident on Twitter, connecting the arrests of the nine pro-life activists to the five unborn babies. 

According to the statement, one of the nine defendants in the case “privately arranged for the Washington, D.C., police homicide unit to pick up” the remains. PAAU describes the babies as “recently discovered” and said they were at late gestational ages and appeared to have “sustained injuries.” The defendant turned them in due to suspicions that forensic examinations could show they were aborted in violation of federal law. The Partial-Birth Abortion Act prohibits a specific technique of late term abortion that involves partially delivering the baby, and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act gives legal protection to infants born alive during abortions. 

Handy and other activists on March 9 accessed labs and freezers at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she said they saw bags “filled with aborted baby body parts.” The PAAU shows a picture of paper bags lining shelves in the freezer. It is unclear if the March 9 visit is related to the aborted baby remains obtained by police this week. 

 

  1. Lesbian Couple Has Baby Boy Instead of Desired Girl and Sues IVF Clinic Saying It Was Just Like Rape

From The Daily Citizen: 

Children have become just another commodity, and it is the tragic consequence of a society that has forgotten the value of human life. As reported by the New York Post, a lesbian couple from New York is suing their IVF clinic for allegedly implanting the “wrong” embryo – a boy instead of a girl. 

The couple, Heather and Robin Wilhelm-Routenberg, said they were only interested in having a baby if that child was a girl.  

They decided to use Robin’s egg, and Heather would carry the baby.   

Apparently, they requested a female embryo but found out at 15-weeks gestation that the baby was a boy. The couple did genetic testing to determine if it was related or possibly a mix-up with another couple’s embryo. Seven weeks later, the test came back and confirmed that it was, indeed, their baby, and it was a boy. 

 

  1. The CDC warns that teen mental health is in ‘steep’ decline

From TheBlaze: 

This past week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicated that American teenagers are experiencing a steep decline in mental health in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and covid lockdown protocols. 

“These data echo a cry for help,” Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s acting principal deputy director, said in a statement. “The COVID-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental wellbeing.” 

The Washington Post reported that the CDC’s new findings draw on a survey of a nationally representative sample of 7,700 teens conducted in the first six months of 2021. 

Children are displaying negative side effects of coming of age while “weathering isolation, uncertainty, economic turmoil, and for many, grief,” the Washington Post reported. 

 

7. Will the metaverse end the megachurch? 

From the Christian Post: 

Months before the coronavirus pandemic hit, many churches struggled to acknowledge that an increasing share of their audience had been migrating to online teachers and worship experiences. 

When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020, data from the Nashville-based LifeWay Research suggests that many churches were not prepared to take their services online. 

At the time, just 22% of pastors livestreamed their entire service, and about 10% only livestreamed their sermon. Some 41% of pastors admitted they didn’t post any portion of their church service online, while about 52% said they posted the sermon online after the church service. 

Data collected in a survey of nearly 2,000 decision-making church leaders for The 2021 State of Church Technology Report from Pushpay shows that most American churches now embrace technology as an important tool in achieving their mission and agree that the digital church is here to stay. The report finds that churches, more than ever, “are enthusiastic to adopt technology for the long haul” as the pandemic “erased any doubts regarding the viability of a digital Church.” 

Earlier this year, Pastor Touré Roberts of the Potter’s House of Denverannounced his congregation would sell their $12.2 million, 137,000-square-foot church in Arapahoe County, Colorado, and go completely virtual after COVID-19 wreaked havoc on their in-person attendance and donations. 

 

  1. Giving Respite Care Changed Our Family

From the Gospel Coalition: 

Our family has had the privilege and joy of hosting 23 (and counting) babies through short-term respite care. Before we adopted our first child in 2009, a family cared for him between his release from the hospital and his placement in our home. At the time, we marveled, Who would volunteer to care for babies at their neediest stage and then give them back? 

A few years later, we were waiting to bring home our third child through adoption. A caseworker from our agency asked if we would consider watching a newborn for a few days while a young mom prepared her apartment for the baby. We had never considered offering short-term care, but we sensed God leading us to care for this newborn girl. That brief placement uprooted our hearts and reset our plans for the future. Not long after, we became an official respite care home. 

We’ve been stretched in so many ways by the challenges of ministering to people experiencing crisis and dysfunction. But respite care has also been the single greatest blessing in our life as a family. Because we became a host family, we have been able to minister to the vulnerable, steward our resources for the benefit of others, and press into greater dependence on Christ. 

Although each family’s or individual’s ministry work will differ, we all need to consider how we can honor the Lord with our first fruits and welcome the least of these into our midst (Prov. 3:9Matt. 25:40). Serving vulnerable families through respite care has allowed our family to point others to God as the stronghold who can handle both their brokenness and ours (Ps. 9:9). 

 

  1. Zelenskyy accuses Russia of genocide for alleged atrocities in Ukraine

From CBS News: 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of committing genocide in Ukraine amid reports that Russian forces were leaving brutalized bodies and widespread destruction in their wake as they withdrew from the Kyiv region. 

“Indeed, this is genocide — the elimination of the whole nation and the people,” Zelenskyy told “Face the Nation” on Sunday in an exclusive interview. 

The Ukrainian leader said Russia’s invasion, now in its sixth week, is about “the destruction and extermination” of the more than 100 nationalities in his country. 

“We are the citizens of Ukraine and we don’t want to be subdued to the policy of the the Russian federation, and this is the reason we are being destroyed and exterminated,” Zelenskyy said through a translator, pointing out that the alleged atrocities are happening in “the Europe of the 21st century.” 

 

RELATED:  

Without Ronald Reagan, there would be no Volodymyr Zelenskyy  

From Fox News: 

For the last month, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been rallying his people against the vicious brutality of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Facing near unsurmountable odds, the former comedian has been dodging bullets and bombs – but he’s only been in a position to do so because a former president of another time dodged death from the bullets of would-be-assassin John Hinckley’s gun.  

President Zelenskyy was 3 years old on March 30, 1981, when Ronald Reagan emerged from the Washington Hilton. Reagan had just delivered a speech to the AFL-CIO. As he waved and smiled to those outside on that rainy Tuesday, the 40th president was struck by a single bullet that broke a rib and punctured and collapsed his left lung, lodging itself just one inch from his heart. Miraculously, Reagan survived. 

A man of deep Christian faith, Ronald Reagan long attributed his unlikely recovery to a “Divine Plan” – a belief that God had spared him for a very specific purpose. 

Recounting the moment in his diary later that day, he wrote, “Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve Him in every way I can.” 

In the weeks and months that followed, President Reagan became convinced he had been spared for a singular purpose: to rid the world of atheistic Soviet communism. To Reagan, there was no greater injustice than preventing access to the Gospel and therefore eternal salvation. 

 

RELATED: 

5 Ways God Has Answered Prayers in Ukraine 

From The Daily Citizen: 

“Mary” (not her real name) is a Christian missionary living in the battle-torn country of Ukraine. In order to protect her identity and location we will not share any details of her current situation. But from the images and reports broadcast around the world, we know those living within the country’s borders are living in a constant state of danger – Mary included. 

As hostilities continue to rage in eastern Europe, Mary recently texted a friend here in the United States to assure her our prayers are actually being answered – though sometimes in unconventional ways.  

Here is Mary’s text: 

While you were praying for Ukraine, many of the rockets shot into the country did NOT explode. 

While you were praying for Ukraine, the man run over by a Russian tank survived. 

While you were praying for Ukraine, Russian paratroopers coming in from Belarus were blown back by a very strong wind. 

While you were praying for Ukraine, God sent snow that covered the enemy’s marks and targets. 

While you were praying for Ukraine, there was a storm in the Black Sea that didn’t allow the Russian ships to land.  

If God is for us, then who can be against us? 

Your prayers are working. 

 

  1. North Carolina Coach Talks Boldly About Jesus

From The Daily Citizen: 

North Carolina’s Hubert Davis is in his first season as the Tar Heels’ head coach, though he served as an assistant between 2012 and 2020. He also played at Chapel Hill between 1988 and 1992 for legendary coach Dean Smith. 

In some ways, Coach Davis brings to mind Coach John Wooden – UCLA’s “Wizard of Westwood” who won ten national titles – but was even better known for the Christian love and care he demonstrated towards his players. 

“One of the things that I do is pray all of the time that Jesus would put good people in my kids’ life, like Coach Smith, Coach Guthridge and Coach Williams,” Davis said. “People that genuinely care for you, that there’s no hidden agenda, they’re genuinely on your side.” 

Does it surprise you that a head coach of a secular university would be so bold as to talk about Jesus during a press conference? 

It turns out Coach Davis experienced a crisis of his childhood Christian faith when his mother died while he was in high school. He entered the University of North Carolina as an angry man – bitter that God robbed him of the mother he loved at such a formative time of his life. 

Coach Dean Smith and his assistants urged all their players to go to church – to aim higher than a basketball hoop and consider that maybe there were things more important than sports. 

“I went to church, only because Coach Smith and Coach Guthridge encouraged me to go to church, I started to understand what my mom was talking about. I started to understand the sacrifice that Jesus made for me and how much He loves me, and two days before my junior year of college, I became a Christian.” 

He continued: 

“Instead of being upset that Jesus has taken away the most beautiful person in my life in my mom, I’m thankful every day that He gave me the best that I could ever have for 16 years. My faith in Christ is the foundation of who I am. When I say that I will walk this path in my own shoes and my personality, my own shoes and my personality is my faith.” 

It’s always refreshing to see a fellow believer speak so candidly about what has shaped and defined them. One gets the impression the usual antagonists from groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation who regularly antagonize Christians in the public square, don’t intimidate Coach Davis. 

“My faith and foundation is firmly in my relationship with Jesus,” he said. “It just is. My mom used to always say that Jesus had a plan for me, plans for hope and a future, plans not to harm you, plans to prosper you — Jeremiah 29:11.”