Good Morning!
Dr. William Osler was a Canadian physician and one of the four professors who founded Johns Hopkins Hospital. He once wrote:
“Be calm and strong and patient. Meet failure and disappointment with courage. Rise superior to the trials of life, and never give in to hopelessness or despair. In danger, in adversity, cling to your principles and ideals. Aequanimitas!”
Aequanimitas – meaning “calmness of mind” in the face of adversity – was on display this past weekend by pro-life stalwarts in Denver. It’s a trait that Christian believers should cultivate and possess:
- Radical Colorado Pro-Abortion Bill is Pure Evil
Focus on the Family president Jim Daly writes:
National momentum may be moving in the direction of life, but radical abortion activists and legislators here in Colorado are determined to enshrine unfettered access to the killing of innocent life.
Pro-life legislators at the Denver Capitol filibustered the heinous act for 23 straight hours Friday into Saturday morning. It was the longest legislative debate in Colorado in the last 25 years.
Just this past week, Focus on the Family’s Nicole Hunt spent over 12 hours up at the state house waiting to testify against the legislation. She was finally given the opportunity to do so at 2:20 A.M. The Capitol was flooded with like-minded champions for life. It was an emotionally charged atmosphere.
In the end, however, the bill passed out of committee along party lines by a vote of 7-4.
Stunning and shocking as it might sound, this legislation – which is unfortunately likely to pass – makes clear that pre-born children have no rights under Colorado law.
It’s wicked. It’s evil. It’s unconscionable.
Although the legislature appears stacked against the cause for life, we’ve done our best to call attention to the horrors of this radical legislation. We’ve urged our constituents here in Colorado to contact their representative and ask them to vote NO against such a barbaric law.
Focus on the Family also co-sponsored a pro-life rally up at the Denver Capitol on Saturday.
It’s important that we raise our voices in opposition to such cruelty.
Despite the steep odds, please join me in praying for a change of heart in these legislators and for a miraculous turn of the tide towards life here in Colorado.
RELATED:
Pro-Life Representatives in Colorado Filibuster the Nation’s Most Radical Abortion Bill
From the Daily Citizen:
HB22-1279, the abortion on demand bill, would not only codify abortion under state law, but it would also invalidate existing limits on abortion and prohibit future laws restricting abortion.
This extreme measure would legalize abortion for any reason and at any time during pregnancy up until the moment of birth with no questions asked.
In addition, the bill would declare that preborn babies have no rights under Colorado law. Indeed, it would ban the state from providing any rights to babies in the womb.
2. Texas Heartbeat Law Survives Major Legal Hurdle, Remains in Effect
From The Daily Citizen:
In the complicated litigation over the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as SB8, which prohibits abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, the Texas Supreme Court just handed a major victory to pro-life supporters of the law. The justices ruled that the administrative agencies mentioned in the law have no enforcement responsibilities with regard to it and therefore can’t be sued in an effort to block the law.
The bottom line of the federal litigation thus far is that there are no Texas state officials or agencies that have enforcement responsibilities under SB8.
That’s by design, and hugely important. And the abortion industry is hopping mad about that.
3. Go Ahead. Pray for Putin’s Demise.
From Christianity Today:
I find myself turning again and again to the imprecatory psalms. Each morning I’m praying Psalm 7:14–16 with Vladimir Putin in mind: “Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends” (ESV).
An imprecation is a curse. The imprecatory psalms are those that call down destruction, calamity, and God’s judgment on enemies. Honestly, I don’t usually know what to do with them. I pray them simply as a rote practice. But I gravitate toward more even-keeled promises of God’s presence and mercy. I am often uncomfortable with the violence and self-assured righteousness found in these kinds of psalms.
But they were made for moments like these.
These psalms express our outrage about injustice unleashed on others, and they call on God to do something about it.
The imprecatory psalms name evil. They remind us that those who have great power are able to destroy the lives of the weak with seeming impunity. This is the world we live in. We cannot simply hold hands, sing “Kumbaya,” and hope for the best. Our hearts call out for judgment against the wickedness that leaves fathers weeping alone over their silent sons. We need words to express our indignation at this evil.
Those of us who long for lasting peace cannot base that hope on an idea that people are inherently good and therefore unworthy of true judgment. Instead, we find our hope in the belief that God is at work in the world, and he is as real—more real—than evil.
4. Disney Attacks Parental Rights in Education – Florida Governor Defends It
From The Daily Citizen:
Just this week, the Florida state legislature bravely stood up for the rights of parents to direct their children’s education.
The legislature passed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which does several things. The legislation:
- Requires that school districts adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in their student’s services or monitoring related to a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.
- Ensures that all procedures adopted under the bill must reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children.
- Prohibits school districts from maintaining procedures that withhold information, or encourage students to withhold information, related to a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being from parents.
- Restricts discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity to only those that are age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate for students, while prohibiting a school district from encouraging discussions of these topics with children in kindergarten thru 3rd grade.
- Creates a cause of action for parents that permits them to enforce their rights through declaratory and injunctive relief.
However, following passage of the bill through the legislature, the Walt Disney Company came out against the bill.
5. Why Florida is ground zero for America’s ‘culture war’
From Politico:
“When you drop your kids off in the morning like I do, and they go into school, do my rights end as a parent?” GOP House Speaker Chris Sprowls told reporters this week. “Have I ceded all of my authority to the school district so they can teach our kids whatever they want whenever they want? And I think the conversation you’ve seen us have in the House this year is we don’t believe that.”
Florida’s state government has been in the firm control of Republicans for nearly 25 years, and most of the time that translated into cutting taxes, loosening business regulations or clashing with teachers unions over vouchers and charter schools. This is the state that pushed ahead with one of the first ‘stand your ground’ laws in the nation. Lawmakers and Gov. Jeb Bush garnered national attention when they waded into the fierce legal tug-of-war over Terri Schiavo, a woman who was in a persistent vegetative state.
Some of the “culture war” clashes on display this year have already played out in other states. But the condensed nature of Florida’s 60-day session put the nation’s politics into overdrive in the halls of the Capitol.
One Republican Florida lawmaker, Sen. Ileana Garcia of Miami, sparked intense backlash over her comments on the bill when she claimed that being gay is not “permanent.”
The statements from Garcia, who was also criticized by LGBTQ advocates for referring to personal friend who is transgender by the incorrect pronouns, led to a protest at her local legislative office.
“Gay is not a permanent thing, LGBT is not a permanent thing — and it’s not a bad thing,” Garcia said on the Senate floor this week. “This isn’t at all about targeting. I think this is about perhaps about rerouting the responsibilities back to the parents.” Scientific studies suggest that people don’t choose to be gay.
6. Why Justice Clarence Thomas worries about the future of the U.S. Supreme Court
From the Deseret News:
Polarization, incivility and anger permeating American society could eventually undermine the U.S. Supreme Court and other government institutions, Justice Clarence Thomas said, speaking in Utah Friday.
“You can cavalierly talk about packing the court. You can cavalierly talk about doing this and doing that. At some point, the institutions are going to be compromised,” he said.
People should at least be honest that it’s really about results that they want and that they haven’t been able to make the institution do what they wanted to do or give them what they want when they want it, Thomas said.
“That’s no court at all. That’s no rule of law at all. That’s just willfulness,” he said “I don’t see how that is conducive to having a free and civil society.”
7. Did We Kiss Purity Goodbye?
From Desiring God:
Not long ago, purity was something all Christians seemed to admire, and want, without qualification. Now, many professing believers associate the pursuit of personal purity with the scandal of “purity culture.” Christian pleas for purity, some claim, have spread fear, guilt, and shame instead. I encountered these concerns again as I researched and published a fresh plea for sexual purity.
We likely won’t get to read many articles about the men and women who signed cards and wore rings out of a real, burning love for Jesus. The New York Times likely won’t cover the countless stories of those who credit the movement for helping them make Christian resolves against peer pressure and fight the good fight for purity in days when many weren’t.
Where purity culture erred or was unclear, it wasn’t because Christian leaders called for sexual purity, but because sex and marriage threatened to become bigger than God. Wherever the messaging downplayed grace, or relied disproportionately on fear, or reduced purity to sexual ethics, it plundered the riveting and appealing beauty of purity in Christ — and, ironically, robbed purity of its power to overcome temptation. As purity becomes smaller and more human, it also becomes more burdensome — and less Christian.
Christian purity is rooted in the bigness and goodness of God — his grace, his power, his love, his worth.
The pursuit of purity (then and now) is not mainly about rejecting sexual temptation, but about receiving and embracing the heart of God. Yes, God calls us to walk in purity, but the only path to true purity is covered in blood and leads us to him.
8. Parents, You Don’t Need to Be Cool
From the Gospel Coalition:
“Mom isn’t cool.”
One of my kids made this comment while we were gathered around the dinner table one evening. I immediately felt compelled to prove otherwise and proceeded to share “cool” stories from my life. I’d say, “Did I tell you about the time I . . .” and he would look at me unimpressed and shrug his shoulders. The rest of the family laughed at my efforts to lift myself up in the eyes of my son.
I soon ran out of stories and felt deflated, doomed to wear the scarlet title of “Uncool Mom.”
What I forgot in that moment was that my job as a mom isn’t to be “cool” in the eyes of my children. My job isn’t to shine a light on myself at all. Rather, my job is to point my children to someone else entirely: God.
9. New Genetic Mapping Project Points to Veracity of Adam and Eve
From The Daily Citizen:
It’s a truism of the Christian life:
Whenever science seems to contradict the Bible, just wait – given enough time, science will eventually catch up to the Scriptures.
Case in point:
A research team from the University of Oxford has been pouring over eight databases containing genome sequences from 215 populations.
According to Dr. Yan Wong, one of the authors of the study:
“We have basically built a large family tree, a genealogy for all of humanity that models as exactly as we can the history that generated all the genetic variation we find in humans today. This genealogy allows us to see how every person’s genetic sequence relates to every other, along all the points of the genome.”
In other words – we’re all related.
Critics of the literal, inerrant and infallible Word of God will often suggest science regularly disproves the accuracy of the Bible, but it’s really the other way around.
Long before we were able to confirm the earth was a sphere hanging in space, we read in Isaiah: “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). And long before we ever traveled to space, it was written in Job: “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; He suspends the earth over nothing” (26:7).
That hasn’t stopped antagonists of the Christian faith from regularly accusing believers of being either anti-science or embracing disproven falsehoods. But such charges are spurious and rooted, at best, in gross misunderstanding and confusion.
10. The Joys of Used Bookstores
From Public Discourse:
I’ve always been a sucker for used bookstores, and for any venue that features used books—indie bookstores selling both new and used books, public library sale rooms, you name it. On our honeymoon thirty years ago, my wife had to put up with my stopping at every used bookstore I spotted on Cape Cod—and there were quite a few then (whether there are still, I cannot say). On the way home to Virginia, our little Honda hatchback had so many books in the back that I was unable to use the interior rearview mirror.
A site like Abebooks is great for searching for a book one knows one wants. But a used bookstore! Browsing the shelves leisurely, one discovers books one never knew one must have. Even the smell is enticing, of old paper and leather and cloth.
