Good Morning!
Concluding his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln cast a vision for a nation recovering from civil war:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God give us to see right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to care for him who shall have borne the battle and his widow, and his orphan.”
Two months later, the text of that famous address would be read over Lincoln’s grave – and a portion of the above quote now appears on a plaque on the Veterans Administration building in Washington D.C.
On this Veterans Day, we begin with a tribute to all who have served America’s military:
- Honor to Whom Honor is Due
Focus on the Family president Jim Daly’s Veterans Day commentary set to air on the Fox News Radio:
As we celebrate Veterans Day, I’m reminded of General Douglas MacArthur’s famous address to Congress when he said:
“Old soldiers never die – they just fade away.”
But sadly, both old and young soldiers die every day. And we stand on their shoulders, enjoying relative peace and freedom today because so many gave their lives in times of war – and worked to keep the peace after the fighting stopped.
Veterans hold a special place in our hearts and memories. When you think of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard, what comes to mind first?
I think of guts and gumption – bravery and courage. I think about long days and lonely nights – holding watch in a storm on an aircraft carrier or trudging through a hot, windswept desert in the Middle East.
Our veterans put their lives on the line for very little compensation… and even less credit. Each one is an individual with unique gifts and talents, hopes and dreams – and yet, they so often served almost invisibly in their battalion or squadron.
If they did their job well, few might know their name. But if something went wrong, it could have a devastating impact on everyone else around them.
Many veterans have given their best years to America – and paid the price, physically and emotionally. It’s not easy on the body to serve in the military. Even training has its risks, as men and women are pushed to the brink so they can be ready when the pressure is on and the “rubber bullets” become real.
I also think about how hard it must be to make friends and then lose them in war and deal with survivor’s guilt in the aftermath. Good soldiers are good at compartmentalizing, but they’re still human – and their hearts hurt, just like yours and mine.
Sadly, we’re facing a terrible veteran suicide pandemic. Veterans commit suicide at one and a half times the rate of non-veterans. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is real, and we need to be mindful and aware, keeping an eye out for clues and cues.
When I look at a lineup of veterans, I try and see beyond the medals and the monuments that represent them. I think of the families left behind at home.
Marriage is hard enough in peace and in civilian life. Add the dueling pressures of dangerous deployments and all types of vices and temptations, and many marital unions are pushed to the brink.
Boys and girls are proud of their soldier dads and moms – but truth be told, they just want their dads and moms safe at home.
So, if you see a veteran, I hope you’ll thank them. Write a note. Give a gift. Express your appreciation.
Also, please join me in praying for them, asking God to bless them for their service and sacrifice.
- Focus on the Family Unpacks Prayer and Hope
From Fox TV Lexington (Video)
November is National Adoption Month. Focus on the Family donated 300 suitcases to children in foster care, foster parents, child welfare agencies, and community partners throughout Kentucky on Wednesday.
The donation was a partnership between Focus on the Family, Sunrise Children’s Services, and Orphan Care Alliance.
Wednesday and Thursday, Focus on the Family’s “Wait No More” program brought suitcases to churches and foster care facilities, available to foster parents and case workers to pick-up for children in the foster care system.
According to Focus on the Family Foster Care and Adoption Director Dr. Sharen Ford, many kids in foster care often don’t have their own suitcase to pack up when moving to a different living situation, and reminds us that foster kids need our support.
“The children who are in the foster care system here in Kentucky are children who are precious, they’ve done nothing wrong, they’ve been harmed, they’ve been abused, they’ve been neglected. And they need someone who will care for them, nurture them, and support them,” said Dr. Ford.
The suitcases are different sizes for different age groups, and contain a stuffed animal and Bible, appropriate to the age group’s reading level, in each.
“I know from my history of being in child welfare services, that children come into our foster care system with their things in plastic bags. Those children aren’t trash and their things aren’t trash,” said Dr. Ford.
RELATED: NBC News Kentucky (VIDEO)
The donation was a partnership between Focus on the Family, Sunrise Children’s Services, and Orphan Care Alliance.
- What Home-Schoolers Are Doing Right
From the Wall Street Journal:
Parents want their kids to be well-educated and professionally successful, but they also want them to be healthy, happy and virtuous. By this broader measure of success, home schooling has advantages.
Among the students we examined, home-schoolers were 33% more likely to volunteer, 31% more forgiving and 51% more likely to attend religious services in young adulthood than those who attended public school. (“Levels of forgiveness” were measured on a self-reported four-point scale, which other research has shown predicts some subsequent health and well-being outcomes.) The difference in religious participation has public-health implications, since those who attend services regularly have substantially lower risks of alcohol and drug abuse, depression and suicide. They also have a lower risk of premature death for any reason than those who never attend.
Home-schooled children generally develop into well-adjusted, responsible and socially engaged young adults. Educational attainment matters a great deal, but it would take a peculiarly myopic parent to be indifferent to the loss of these broader goods so long as his child earned a bachelor’s degree.
Family decisions about education involve trade-offs. The millions trying out home schooling for the first time should be clear-sighted about what they’re taking on, particularly for students who want to attend an elite college. But educators, policy makers and parents should consider why the thousands of public-school students in our sample (albeit one that skewed whiter and wealthier than America as a whole) were less forgiving and less apt to volunteer or attend religious services than their home-schooled peers. We shouldn’t accept a public education system that offers academic achievement at the expense of a flourishing life.
4. Bi-Vocational Pastor Could be Punished by Real Estate Association Over Biblical Views
From The Daily Citizen:
Brandon Huber is the lead pastor of Clinton Community Church in Clinton, Montana, population: 757. He’s also a real estate agent and a member of the National Association of Realtors (NAR). In 2020, NAR adopted a policy forbidding members from engaging in “harassing speech” or “hate speech.”
However, the policy applies not just to members’ work in real estate, but to their private lives as well. For a Bible-believing pastor, the policy spelled trouble for him.
And it didn’t take long.
Someone caught wind of Huber’s church backing out of a local lunch program run by a food bank because of the pro-LGBT fliers the food bank included with the lunches. So, they filed a complaint with the local affiliate of NAR.
What did Huber actually say that got him into such hot water?
In a letter to his congregants – along with a posting on a local Clinton community group Facebook page – Huber wrote:
“This year, as well as the past two years, we have partnered with the Missoula Food Bank for the ‘Kids Eat Free’ summer lunch program. This has been a great honor for us to be able to support the kids and families in our community with these meals throughout the summer months. This past week we found printed material in the lunches that we were handing out, that went against our biblical doctrine.
“After conversations with the food bank, we have found out that our beliefs and that of the Missoula Food Bank do not align. Due to this, Clinton Community Church has decided to end our partnership with the Missoula food bank effective today July 2, 2021.”
5. Could Dobbs spell the end of Roe v. Wade?
From World Magazine:
If the justices do overturn Roe, Collett and other pro-lifers foresee new challenges and opportunities to help pregnant mothers and babies. American churches need to step up to serve the abortion-vulnerable women in their communities. Warren hopes churches will pursue a “discipleship” approach that helps young mothers, fathers, and their babies not just in their time of crisis but for months or years afterward.
“The Casey decision didn’t do that—it didn’t inspire the church to really build out the kind of thing that I’m talking about,” he said. “My prayer is that this decision will.”
Warren and others agree the pregnancy center movement has “changed the calculus” on the abortion issue since Casey. “Our movement is so far ahead of where we were in 1992,” Glessner said, noting the massive increase in the number of pregnancy centers in the past three decades.
Heartbeat International’s amicus brief in the Dobbs case pointed out another facet of this growth: Only three pregnancy centers offered medical services at the time of the Casey decision. Today, over 2,000 do. “The pregnancy help movement is one piece of why the court can revisit Roe and revisit Casey and rest assured that women are not going to be … cast into darkness because they find themselves unexpectedly pregnant,” said Danielle White, general counsel for Heartbeat International and author of the brief.
Regardless of the Dobbs decision, Warren said the mission for pregnancy centers and pro-lifers will stay the same: to help build strong families. It’s a victory whenever individual women choose to bring their children into the world despite personal hardship and the availability of legal abortion.
“When you’re on the care side of the pro-life movement, you know, Roe v. Wade is being overturned every day,” said Warren.
- New Pro-Life Measure Introduced in Ohio
From The Daily Citizen:
Ohio lawmakers, inspired by the Texas Heartbeat Act, filed new pro-life legislation in the Ohio House of Representatives. The measure, House Bill 480, is titled the 2363 Act, reflecting the number of abortions performed daily in America.
The proposed law would protect unborn human life from the moment of fertilization until birth, and create an exception where the mother’s life is at risk.
The bill is similar to the Texas law because it permits private citizens to sue anyone who performs, induces, aids, or abets an abortion. That specific provision from the Texas law is currently being reviewed at the United States Supreme Court. The Court heard oral arguments regarding the Texas Heartbeat Act on November 1, 2021, and has not yet ruled on the law’s legality. You can read more about that Supreme Court hearing here.
State Representatives Jen Powell (R-Arcanum) and Thomas Hall (R-Madison Twp) are the primary sponsors of the legislation. They are the two youngest members of the Ohio House and have boldly declared that they are part of the generation to end abortion in Ohio and across America.
- Risk of measles outbreaks growing as 22 million infants miss 1st vaccine: Officials
From ABC News:
More than 22 million infants across the globe didn’t get their first measles vaccine dose last year, according to a joint statement Wednesday from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Two-thirds of those children live in just 10 countries: Nigeria, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Angola, the Philippines, Brazil and Afghanistan.
Even in countries with high vaccination rates, anti-vaccine sentiment has led to outbreaks in some communities. In 2019, for example, the United States saw the highest number of preventable measles cases since 1992, according to the CDC.
Measles, one of the most contagious viruses in the world, is “almost entirely preventable” through the two vaccine doses, the WHO and CDC said.
8. New University Gives Great Hope to Future of Higher Education
From The Daily Citizen:
The University of Austin is founded by a very interesting collection of academics and thought leaders who have become deeply concerned about the shallowness and reactionary fundamentalism of so much of higher education today. Niall Ferguson, a Scottish historian who has taught at Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard Universities, as well as the London School of Economics, explained in Bloomberg that he is assisting in the establishment of the University of Austin “because higher ed is broken.” Ferguson adds, “Something is rotten in the state of academia, and it’s no laughing matter.”
Kanelos, adds, “What unites us is a common dismay at the state of modern academia and a belief that it is time for something new.” The founders of this university state in their founding principles that “for universities to serve their purpose, they must be fully committed to freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse.” So much of higher education is “rotten” and “broken” precisely because these three things have been deliberately excised from the academic process of late.
n their write up on the new school, New York magazine curiously compared the revolutionary nature of this academic venture to Jerry Falwell founding Liberty University in 1971, Pat Robertson establishing Regent University, and Michael Farris building Patrick Henry College on the outskirts of DC’s Beltway.
“These schools exist as laboratories for right-wing thought; they are committed not to free expression but to indoctrination. The University of Austin will be no different.”
In doing this, this elitist magazine illustrates the very troubled close-mindedness and ideological hyperbole that is giving rise to important new schools like the University of Austin.
9. Self-Worship Is the World’s Fastest-Growing Religion
In our day, the Westminster Catechism answer has been inverted: “the chief end of man is to glorify and enjoy himself forever.” One could even make a case that self-worship is the world’s fastest-growing religion. It is certainly the world’s oldest (just read Gen. 3). Moreover, this religion lies beneath many of the most hot-button social and political issues of our day.
These are the sacred commandments of this ancient and still-trending world religion:
- Your mind is the source and standard of truth, so no matter what, trust yourself. #theanswersarewithin
- Your emotions are authoritative, so never question (or let anyone else question) your feelings. #followyourheart
- You are sovereign, so flex your omnipotence and bend the universe around your dreams and desires. #liveyourtruth
- You are supreme, so always act according to your chief end, to glorify and enjoy yourself forever. #yolo
- You are the summum bonum—the standard of goodness—so don’t let anyone oppress you with the antiquated notion of being a sinner who needs grace. #neverchange.
- You are the Creator, so use that limitless creative power to craft your identity and purpose. #authenticity.
Do we want happier, fuller lives? The science is clear. Let us be awestruck by something, or rather someone, infinitely bigger than ourselves. If we’re going to have a lasting, countercultural effect on a society that has fallen for the cult of self-worship, then let’s recenter our lives on the “God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all those who are around him” (Ps. 89:7).
10. The Sacrifice of the Unknown Soldier
From the Wall Street Journal:
Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the interment of the unidentified World War I serviceman who lies at rest in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. Though not often remembered these days, the interment was a massive event. Hundreds of thousands thronged Washington to witness the solemn procession of the casket from the Capitol to the cemetery. For all its pomp and gravity, however, the day could not begin to predict the role the tomb would come to play in binding and healing the nation.
Sacrifice is the glue that binds us as a nation. Perhaps more than even the Constitution itself, the thing that makes us a people is our willingness to lay down our lives for our fellow citizens, regardless of their identity, religion, politics or race.
For 100 years, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is where we say thank you. As long as the nation exists, there will be those willing to sacrifice for it. Because that sacrifice matters, the nation will guard and honor a single soldier standing for the entirety of the sacrifice. He left his home, fought and was killed. He did it for us. Now he rests in honored glory, his name known only to God.
