The Bulletin Board:(Please SCROLL DOWN this page to find the article titled on this post in LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS. Thank you.)
PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14)
U.S. Supreme Court to Reconvene THIS week: Let's be praying WHENEVER the Court is in session as their decisions can have impact on GENERATIONS TO COME. The fact that they may have an opportunity this session to actually vote on same-sex "marriage" where it has the same impact on this country that Roe v. Wade did should be motivating enough!
ELECTION DAY, NOV. 4th. Let's begin praying that the American people will have wisdom in voting into office those who will lead our communities and nation with integrity and wisdom from God and DO NO HARM!.
WORLD-WDE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Friday, Sept. 26th - Two Year Anniversary of Pastor Saeed Abedini's Imprisonment in Iran! - [NOTE TODAY'S POST!]
We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States. We also remain hopeful that in addition to getting the medical care he so desperately needs, that Iranian officials display the kind of humanitarian treatment that often accompanies the start of the Iranian New Year which began on March 21st. This is the time of year when the Iranian government frequently offers clemency to prisoners of conscience. [If you have not yet, please sign the petition for his clemency- http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign]
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/July/Obama-Taps-Rabbi-for-Religious-Freedom-Ambassador/ "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States must take a strong stand against those violations. "Around the world repressive governments and extremists groups have been crystal clear about what they stand against, so we have to be equally clear about what we must stand for," Kerry said. "We stand for greater freedom, for greater tolerance, greater respect, for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience," he said A key development in the 2013 report is the large number of displaced members of religious communities, including entire Christian communities in Syria and Iraq that have been forced to flee their homes because of persecution."
SIGN A PETITION TO THE UN FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTIANS :" The church in Syria has shone brightly for 2,000 years. But today violence and persecution threatens its survival. Thanks to an incredible response, Open Doors is helping 8,000 families in Syria survive each month. We believe the signatures and prayers of 500,000 people will encourage the UN to act and protect the rights and lives of all Syrians, especially the vulnerable Christian community." Go to: http://lp.opendoorsusa.org/emails/nov-13-action/save-syria.html?utm_source=action&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=november
UPDATE: "Second US Doctor Sick with Ebola; Crisis 'Out of Control'" - CBNNews.com, Sept. 02, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2014/September/A-Losing-Battle-Ebola-Going-to-Get-Worse-CDC-Says/ "Another American doctor in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus, according to the international Christian mission organization, SIM. SIM leaders report the American doctor was treating obstetrics patients at the organization's ELWA Hospital in Monrovia and not treating Ebola patients..."The epidemic is going faster than we are," he warned. 'We need to scale up our response. We can hope for new tools and maybe they'll come, but we can't count on them.' So far, the West African outbreak has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria."
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)
LATEST:"Christians in the Middle East Arm Themselves As Genocide Comes to Their Front Door" - Katie Pavlich | Sep 05, 2014;
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/09/05/christians-in-the-middle-east-arm-themselves-as-violence-rages-around-them-n1887849" Earlier this week the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported on armed Iraqi citizen volunteers who helped government forces fight off ISIS in Amerli. Today, the AP is out with a story about Christians in the Middle East who are arming themselves, carrying weapons with them during daily tasks and heading to the hills at night to defend their communities as violence continues to rage around them. Genocide is at their front door and they're doing everything they can to stop it from coming in... So far, the terror army ISIS has slaughtered and tortured thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria."
/PRAYER ALERT- UKRAINE: As the Lord leads, please pray:
*For God to suppress President Putin’s ambitions to "restore" the Soviet empire.
*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church'] as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.
*About President Obama and to use wisdom in crafting our foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.
Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.]
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"This 29-Year-Old Woman Has Chosen to Die. Why That’s a Loss for All of Us." - Katrina Trinko/ October 08, 2014; http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/08/29-year-old-woman-chosen-die-thats-loss-us/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell%22&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoku6nJZKXonjHpfsX56eguXa%2B3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4DRcZlI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D
Brittany Maynard’s story is heartbreaking. [see video at the above weblink]
The 29-year-old has terminal brain cancer. She was diagnosed on New Year’s Day this year, just a little over a year after her wedding. After an April diagnosis of six months to live, Maynard decided to move from San Francisco to Portland, Ore., to obtain a prescription that would allow her to die when she chose to. Currently, Oregon is one of five states that allow euthanasia in certain circumstances.
Brittany Maynard on her wedding day. (Photo: Compassion Choices YouTube)
“I considered passing away in hospice care,” she writes in a CNN column. “But even with palliative medication, I could develop potentially morphine-resistant pain and suffer personality changes and verbal, cognitive and motor loss of virtually any kind.” Maynard is planning to die Nov. 1, a few days after her husband’s birthday on Oct. 26.
“I will die upstairs in my bedroom that I share with my husband, with my mother and my husband by my side,” she recounts in the video she made about her decision, “and pass peacefully, with some music that I like in the background.” “My glioblastoma is going to kill me, and that’s out of my control,” Maynard told People. “I’ve discussed with many experts how I would die from it, and it’s a terrible, terrible way to die. Being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying.”
It’s not surprising that euthanasia advocates have embraced the phrase “death with dignity.” It’s powerful. It’s evocative.Because death is very rarely dignified. It’s painful and it’s sordid. It’s often in a sterilized, cold hospital room, or a nursing home facility, with machines beeping in the background and strangers everywhere. There may or may not be last words, or even consciousness at the end, depending on the patient’s state. And the pain can be searing, incredible, horrific.
All of this is true—and none of it makes euthanasia a good choice. Because human life is valuable. There are no qualifications. It’s not just valuable when someone is healthy, or as long as someone has all his or her mental faculties.It’s valuable always.No matter what.
As a teen, I watched my grandma descend further and further into ill health. She lost the ability to walk, even with a walker. She needed help in the bathroom. She couldn’t dress herself. She was legally blind. Sometimes she was mentally competent, but there were other times she was senile, when she would eagerly ask me if I had enjoyed that book she got me for Christmas, the one made of bathroom tissue she had specially picked out for me.
Family photo of Rosemary Trinko, her wheelchair pushed by her grandson.
She lived with my family, and then in a nursing home. She was in and out of hospitals, struggled with heart failure, and battled depression after my grandpa passed away. I don’t know why she was allowed to suffer like she did. I’ll probably never know.But I do know that her suffering was not a wasted time.
In high school, I read Blaise Pascal’s “Pensees,” and this particular passage stayed with me:
"But does he who loves someone on account of beauty really love that person? No; for the small-pox, which will kill beauty without killing the person, will cause him to love her no more. And if one loves me for my judgment, memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this Ego, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul? And how love the body or the soul, except for these qualities which do not constitute me, since they are perishable? … We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.We never, then, love a person, but only qualities."
I know this isn’t true—because of my grandma.
My grandma’s beauty faded, her judgment was impaired, and her memory was often absent. Once a gifted artist, she was now no longer able to paint. Her personality, her traits both good and bad, her generosity and her temper, seemed to drift away.
Family photo of Rosemary Trinko.
You could say, negatively, that she was a shell of herself. Or you could say that she gave us an opportunity: She gave us a chance to love her, to love Rosemary Trinko, without the distraction of all her qualities and traits.And that was an amazing gift. I’m glad she gave it to us.
There are other reasons to be wary about legalizing physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. In a 2013 article published on Public Discourse, bioethicist Jacqueline C. Harvey listed several concerns.
Talking about the process that proceeded Vermont’s legalization of physician-assisted suicide “legislators heard reports of incidents where terminally ill citizens were told by state medical plan authorities that they would not pay the cost of pain control, but would cover the cost of their suicides,” wrote Harvey. “They heard about study after study where research shows [physician-assisted suicide] serves to benefit the caregiver, not the patient.” Furthermore, “a review of studies … indicate physicians often incorrectly diagnosed patients with terminal conditions and incorrectly estimated their life expectancy at six months or fewer.”
Harvey also expressed concern that some patients would benefit from psychiatric assistance:
" [Vermont lawmakers] were informed too of substantial evidence that many patients opting to end their lives suffer from treatable depression, and physicians report that patients for whom interventions were made (like treating depression) were more likely to change their minds about wanting to end their lives."
These are serious concerns. We’re talking about people being pressured—by either those who hold the purse strings or those who are helping take care of them—to choose death, just because it’s now an option. We’re talking about people who could have lived significantly longer, inadvertently forfeiting that time because of the option to choose death. And we’re talking about people who are making a choice, not from a well-adjusted mind, but from the depths of depression.
Is this the kind of society we want? Let’s stop talking about dignity—and let’s start talking about love.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Katrina Trinko is managing editor of The Daily Signal and a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors.
PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14)
U.S. Supreme Court to Reconvene THIS week: Let's be praying WHENEVER the Court is in session as their decisions can have impact on GENERATIONS TO COME. The fact that they may have an opportunity this session to actually vote on same-sex "marriage" where it has the same impact on this country that Roe v. Wade did should be motivating enough!
ELECTION DAY, NOV. 4th. Let's begin praying that the American people will have wisdom in voting into office those who will lead our communities and nation with integrity and wisdom from God and DO NO HARM!.
WORLD-WDE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Friday, Sept. 26th - Two Year Anniversary of Pastor Saeed Abedini's Imprisonment in Iran! - [NOTE TODAY'S POST!]
We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States. We also remain hopeful that in addition to getting the medical care he so desperately needs, that Iranian officials display the kind of humanitarian treatment that often accompanies the start of the Iranian New Year which began on March 21st. This is the time of year when the Iranian government frequently offers clemency to prisoners of conscience. [If you have not yet, please sign the petition for his clemency- http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign]
PRAY ALSO : - For comfort and peace for Saeed’s wife and children here in the U.S.\
- For a strong witness and testimony from Pastor Abedini in the prison where God has placed him
- For Christians around the world who are being persecuted for their faith in Christ
- For leadership from the White House and State Department in defending the freedoms of Abedini and other Americans
- GO TO SaveSaeed.org to sign a petition over 600,000 others asking for his immediate release
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/July/Obama-Taps-Rabbi-for-Religious-Freedom-Ambassador/ "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States must take a strong stand against those violations. "Around the world repressive governments and extremists groups have been crystal clear about what they stand against, so we have to be equally clear about what we must stand for," Kerry said. "We stand for greater freedom, for greater tolerance, greater respect, for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience," he said A key development in the 2013 report is the large number of displaced members of religious communities, including entire Christian communities in Syria and Iraq that have been forced to flee their homes because of persecution."
SIGN A PETITION TO THE UN FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTIANS :" The church in Syria has shone brightly for 2,000 years. But today violence and persecution threatens its survival. Thanks to an incredible response, Open Doors is helping 8,000 families in Syria survive each month. We believe the signatures and prayers of 500,000 people will encourage the UN to act and protect the rights and lives of all Syrians, especially the vulnerable Christian community." Go to: http://lp.opendoorsusa.org/emails/nov-13-action/save-syria.html?utm_source=action&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=november
UPDATE: "Second US Doctor Sick with Ebola; Crisis 'Out of Control'" - CBNNews.com, Sept. 02, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2014/September/A-Losing-Battle-Ebola-Going-to-Get-Worse-CDC-Says/ "Another American doctor in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus, according to the international Christian mission organization, SIM. SIM leaders report the American doctor was treating obstetrics patients at the organization's ELWA Hospital in Monrovia and not treating Ebola patients..."The epidemic is going faster than we are," he warned. 'We need to scale up our response. We can hope for new tools and maybe they'll come, but we can't count on them.' So far, the West African outbreak has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria."
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)
LATEST:"Christians in the Middle East Arm Themselves As Genocide Comes to Their Front Door" - Katie Pavlich | Sep 05, 2014;
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/09/05/christians-in-the-middle-east-arm-themselves-as-violence-rages-around-them-n1887849" Earlier this week the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported on armed Iraqi citizen volunteers who helped government forces fight off ISIS in Amerli. Today, the AP is out with a story about Christians in the Middle East who are arming themselves, carrying weapons with them during daily tasks and heading to the hills at night to defend their communities as violence continues to rage around them. Genocide is at their front door and they're doing everything they can to stop it from coming in... So far, the terror army ISIS has slaughtered and tortured thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria."
/PRAYER ALERT- UKRAINE: As the Lord leads, please pray:
*For God to suppress President Putin’s ambitions to "restore" the Soviet empire.
*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church'] as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.
*About President Obama and to use wisdom in crafting our foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.
Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.]
"This 29-Year-Old Woman Has Chosen to Die. Why That’s a Loss for All of Us." - Katrina Trinko/ October 08, 2014; http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/08/29-year-old-woman-chosen-die-thats-loss-us/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell%22&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoku6nJZKXonjHpfsX56eguXa%2B3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4DRcZlI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D
Brittany Maynard’s story is heartbreaking. [see video at the above weblink]
The 29-year-old has terminal brain cancer. She was diagnosed on New Year’s Day this year, just a little over a year after her wedding. After an April diagnosis of six months to live, Maynard decided to move from San Francisco to Portland, Ore., to obtain a prescription that would allow her to die when she chose to. Currently, Oregon is one of five states that allow euthanasia in certain circumstances.
Brittany Maynard on her wedding day. (Photo: Compassion Choices YouTube)
“I considered passing away in hospice care,” she writes in a CNN column. “But even with palliative medication, I could develop potentially morphine-resistant pain and suffer personality changes and verbal, cognitive and motor loss of virtually any kind.” Maynard is planning to die Nov. 1, a few days after her husband’s birthday on Oct. 26.
“I will die upstairs in my bedroom that I share with my husband, with my mother and my husband by my side,” she recounts in the video she made about her decision, “and pass peacefully, with some music that I like in the background.” “My glioblastoma is going to kill me, and that’s out of my control,” Maynard told People. “I’ve discussed with many experts how I would die from it, and it’s a terrible, terrible way to die. Being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying.”
It’s not surprising that euthanasia advocates have embraced the phrase “death with dignity.” It’s powerful. It’s evocative.Because death is very rarely dignified. It’s painful and it’s sordid. It’s often in a sterilized, cold hospital room, or a nursing home facility, with machines beeping in the background and strangers everywhere. There may or may not be last words, or even consciousness at the end, depending on the patient’s state. And the pain can be searing, incredible, horrific.
All of this is true—and none of it makes euthanasia a good choice. Because human life is valuable. There are no qualifications. It’s not just valuable when someone is healthy, or as long as someone has all his or her mental faculties.It’s valuable always.No matter what.
As a teen, I watched my grandma descend further and further into ill health. She lost the ability to walk, even with a walker. She needed help in the bathroom. She couldn’t dress herself. She was legally blind. Sometimes she was mentally competent, but there were other times she was senile, when she would eagerly ask me if I had enjoyed that book she got me for Christmas, the one made of bathroom tissue she had specially picked out for me.
Family photo of Rosemary Trinko, her wheelchair pushed by her grandson.
She lived with my family, and then in a nursing home. She was in and out of hospitals, struggled with heart failure, and battled depression after my grandpa passed away. I don’t know why she was allowed to suffer like she did. I’ll probably never know.But I do know that her suffering was not a wasted time.
In high school, I read Blaise Pascal’s “Pensees,” and this particular passage stayed with me:
"But does he who loves someone on account of beauty really love that person? No; for the small-pox, which will kill beauty without killing the person, will cause him to love her no more. And if one loves me for my judgment, memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this Ego, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul? And how love the body or the soul, except for these qualities which do not constitute me, since they are perishable? … We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.We never, then, love a person, but only qualities."
I know this isn’t true—because of my grandma.
My grandma’s beauty faded, her judgment was impaired, and her memory was often absent. Once a gifted artist, she was now no longer able to paint. Her personality, her traits both good and bad, her generosity and her temper, seemed to drift away.
Family photo of Rosemary Trinko.
You could say, negatively, that she was a shell of herself. Or you could say that she gave us an opportunity: She gave us a chance to love her, to love Rosemary Trinko, without the distraction of all her qualities and traits.And that was an amazing gift. I’m glad she gave it to us.
There are other reasons to be wary about legalizing physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. In a 2013 article published on Public Discourse, bioethicist Jacqueline C. Harvey listed several concerns.
Talking about the process that proceeded Vermont’s legalization of physician-assisted suicide “legislators heard reports of incidents where terminally ill citizens were told by state medical plan authorities that they would not pay the cost of pain control, but would cover the cost of their suicides,” wrote Harvey. “They heard about study after study where research shows [physician-assisted suicide] serves to benefit the caregiver, not the patient.” Furthermore, “a review of studies … indicate physicians often incorrectly diagnosed patients with terminal conditions and incorrectly estimated their life expectancy at six months or fewer.”
Harvey also expressed concern that some patients would benefit from psychiatric assistance:
" [Vermont lawmakers] were informed too of substantial evidence that many patients opting to end their lives suffer from treatable depression, and physicians report that patients for whom interventions were made (like treating depression) were more likely to change their minds about wanting to end their lives."
These are serious concerns. We’re talking about people being pressured—by either those who hold the purse strings or those who are helping take care of them—to choose death, just because it’s now an option. We’re talking about people who could have lived significantly longer, inadvertently forfeiting that time because of the option to choose death. And we’re talking about people who are making a choice, not from a well-adjusted mind, but from the depths of depression.
Is this the kind of society we want? Let’s stop talking about dignity—and let’s start talking about love.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Katrina Trinko is managing editor of The Daily Signal and a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors.
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