Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, California, pastored by Rev. John MacArthur, has settled a legal dispute with the State of California and Los Angeles County over COVID restrictions that will result in the church receiving $800,000. The money will go to pay for attorneys’ fees the church incurred in fighting the state and county’s attempts to deny the church’s right to gather together to worship God.

At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the church canceled its in-person worship services and began live-streaming them instead. However, as the pandemic dragged on, and government restrictions became more onerous, MacArthur and his church defied those orders, which included such things as bans on indoor services, handshakes, communion and singing.

When the government attempted to enforce its orders by taking MacArthur and his church to court, the church filed its own lawsuit against the state and county, alleging that its freedom of religion was being infringed.

Nearly twenty years after it began, the war in Afghanistan has ended with a startling declaration from a Taliban spokesman on the tarmac of the Kabul airport. “This victory belongs to us all,” bellowed Zabihullah Mujahid. America’s frantic withdrawal from the war-torn country, exacerbated by the tragic deaths of thirteen service members last week, has left many angry and heartbroken — and some even questioning whether the two-decade effort was worth it at all.

The cost of war is often calculated in deaths and dollars, two disparate measures that are often conflated together. In fact, the human cost is incalculable — the loss of potential and future hopes and dreams of loved ones almost too unbearable to even ponder, let alone quantify.

Since 2001, 2,461 Americans have died in Afghanistan. But we’re often numbed by numbers — that is until names and faces are attached to them. As thirteen flag-draped coffins returned to the United States this past weekend, and we learned the names and backgrounds of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, the toll seems all the more terrible.

There has been a spate of highly encouraging pro-life news that’s emerged from the state of Texas in recent days. On September 1, Texas became the first state to successfully limit abortions pre-viability since Roe v. Wade was decreed in 1973.

Now, The Lone Star State will likely be able to chalk up one more pro-life win soon.

Texas Senate Bill 4 (S.B. 4) regulates the use of the abortion pill (which is actually two pills taken at two different times).

The bill states that before an abortionist provides a woman with the abortion pill, they must “ensure [they do] not provide an abortion-inducing drug for a pregnant woman whose pregnancy is more than 49 days of gestation age.”

In other words, the bill prohibits the use of the abortion pill after seven weeks gestation.