Sons of Issachar: July 29th, 2026

Written By Justin Scaggs

"For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling," Isaiah 30:15, ESV

This was the week the guns went quiet, and then, on Tuesday evening, they did not. Five nights passed without an American strike on Iranian soil, the longest silence since the campaign resumed three weeks ago; Iran held its own fire, Qatar and Pakistan carried messages between the capitals, oil fell nearly nine percent in a day, and negotiators from Oman and Iran worked on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Then the Revolutionary Guard fired a surprise barrage of ballistic missiles at American forces, every one of them intercepted, and American and Saudi aircraft struck militia sites across eastern Iraq in reply. It happened while Israel's prime minister was inside the White House. Off Saudi Arabia the Houthis declared a blockade and set a tanker on fire, so that both of the world's oil gates are now under attack at once. Iran hanged two young men in a public square in Isfahan while the crowd shouted at the executioners. In Gaza the famine was declared over, a real mercy, even as the yellow line pushed deeper into neighborhoods and Israel approved the first foreign force to enter the strip. Ukrainian drones shut the Black Sea terminal that carries most of Kazakhstan's oil, forcing a country not at war to cut a fifth of its production, so that the world's oil is now squeezed at three gates at once. A red calf was born in the Golan, deliberately left untagged so a piercing would not disqualify it. Fire drove three hundred thousand people from their homes in France and Spain. None of this proves a date. All of it finds the church where the prophet said our strength actually lies, in quietness and in trust.

Headlines:

1. The pause that broke

For five nights the sky over Iran was empty, the longest pause in offensive operations since the campaign resumed on July 7. Iran's military said it would hold its retaliatory attacks as long as the quiet lasted. The President said Tehran had asked to resume ceasefire talks because, in his words, we have been hitting them very hard; Tehran denied negotiating with Washington at all, which can be true at the same time when Qatar and Pakistan are carrying the messages. Markets believed the calm before the diplomats would name it: Brent crude fell eight and a half percent in a day to about eighty-eight dollars, and a war that had driven oil more than fifty percent higher this year gave a little back.

It lasted until Tuesday evening. At a quarter to six eastern time the Revolutionary Guard launched multiple ballistic missiles from Iran at American forces in the region in what Central Command called an attempted surprise attack. Every missile was intercepted. American and Saudi aircraft then struck logistics and weapons sites used by Iran-aligned militias across eastern Iraq, after more than thirty drone attacks on American and Saudi targets in seventy-two hours, and Washington warned that further attacks would bring more. All of this unfolded on the same afternoon Prime Minister Netanyahu sat in the White House and President Zelensky came a few hours later. Five quiet nights, and then the war reached for a new country to be fought in. We should say plainly what that pattern is: not a ceasefire failing, but a war widening while everyone talks about peace.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Jeremiah was not describing men who wanted war; he was describing men who wanted the wound closed faster than it could heal. The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. Give thanks for five nights without bombs, pray for the soldiers under those intercepted missiles and for Iraqi civilians who live where the strikes landed, and ask God for the one thing no summit can manufacture, which is peace that is actually peace.

"They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace." Jeremiah 6:14, ESV

"The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue." Psalm 33:16-17, ESV

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2. The world's oil under fire at three gates

Start in the Black Sea, because this is the piece most people missed. Ukrainian drones struck oil tankers loading at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal near Novorossiysk, hitting a tanker at the berth on July 20 and coming back two days later, and the consortium suspended operations for safety on Monday and took further strikes on Thursday, including damage to a mooring buoy. That terminal is the sea end of a pipeline running fifteen hundred kilometers from the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan through Russia to the coast, and it carries roughly eighty percent of Kazakhstan's crude exports and something close to two percent of the world's daily oil supply. With no way out, Kazakhstan simply had to stop pumping. Production at Tengiz fell fifty-six percent in a day, from a July average of nine hundred twenty-five thousand barrels to about four hundred six thousand, and the country's total output dropped from two million seventy thousand barrels a day to one million six hundred thirty thousand, a twenty-one percent cut. Russia has now warned tankers that its own Black Sea waters are unsafe. Consider what that means: a landlocked nation that is not at war with anybody had to shut in half of its largest field because somebody else's harbor came under attack.

The same squeeze is being applied at both of the other gates. In the Red Sea the Houthis declared a blockade of Saudi ports on Monday, saying it answered a Saudi strike on the airport at Sanaa, and then made it real: the Saudi-flagged tanker Encelia was hit about seventy nautical miles southwest of Al Shuqaiq and caught fire, no casualties reported, and on Tuesday they claimed to have driven off the tanker NCC Ghazal with ballistic missiles while Saudi forces shot down more drones aimed at oil installations. At Hormuz there was actual progress, with Oman and Iran working on reopening the middle passage, though mines still sit in the water, war-risk insurance runs ten to forty times its prewar cost, and traffic is under ten cargo ships a day where a hundred used to pass. Add Ukraine's strikes on Russian refining, Yaroslavl on Monday and two more refineries on Wednesday within hours of President Zelensky leaving the White House, plus Iran's weeks of hitting desalination and power plants across the Gulf, and the shape of it is clear. Three gates, three sets of attackers, one result.

It is worth putting numbers to the scale, because the scale is genuinely historic and honest figures are more useful than adjectives. When Hormuz effectively closed in March, the world lost ten point one million barrels a day, which the International Energy Agency called the largest oil supply disruption in history, more than twice the peak of the 1973 crisis. Flow through the strait fell from over twenty million barrels a day in February to under four million by April, Brent touched a hundred and eighteen dollars, and Iran's own production has slid from roughly three point two million barrels a day to about two point four. Prices have come down since, but we should be honest about why: much of the relief came from the world buying less rather than from supply coming back, with global crude demand down more than three million barrels a day from a year ago. And the Gulf spare capacity that could cover a shortfall, some five million barrels a day, mostly sits behind the same strait that is blocked.

The war in Ukraine has been squeezing the other end of the pipe for four years, in a different way. Ukrainian drones have now struck every one of Russia's largest refineries, taking roughly a third of Russian refining capacity offline, about two million barrels a day of it, and pushing Russian refinery runs below four million barrels a day in June, the lowest in twenty-one years. Russian crude exports are down more modestly, from about five million barrels a day before the invasion to something over four. That distinction is the whole point and it is worth teaching plainly: Ukraine has damaged Russia's ability to make fuel, not mainly its ability to pump oil, which is why an oil superpower has had a gasoline shortage at home while still shipping crude abroad. The two wars cannot simply be added together, since one takes barrels off the water and the other takes diesel out of refineries. But set them side by side and the week comes into focus. One war is squeezing the barrels, the other is squeezing the refineries, and this week both squeezed at once. That is why a quieter week still ends with families paying more for fuel and food, and it is worth understanding as plumbing and economics rather than as omen.

Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. The psalm knows what sailors know, that the sea is no respecter of plans, and it ends with men crying out and being brought to their desired haven. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. Pray for the crew of the Encelia and every mariner threading two threatened straits, for minesweepers who will go first, and for the poor of many nations who pay the toll of a closed sea in the price of bread.

"Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep." Psalm 107:23-24, ESV

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you." Isaiah 43:2, ESV

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3. Iran hangs two young men in a public square

While its diplomats talked about peace, the regime carried a gallows into a public square. On Tuesday morning Iran publicly hanged Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani, twenty-four years old, and Amirhossein Safari Hosseinabadi, twenty-seven, at Alikhani Square in Isfahan, the first public executions in Iran this year. The judiciary charged them with enmity against God and corruption on earth, and with a role in the deaths of four security officers during January's uprising, along with possession of weapons, burning a police station, and blocking streets. Twelve men were sentenced to death in what is now called the Alikhani Square case; rights groups say eight of them remain at imminent risk of the rope. At least fifty people have now been executed for political offenses since the end of February.

The detail worth sitting with is what the neighbors did. A crowd gathered to stop it, shouted dishonorable at the men doing the hanging, and refused to disperse until security forces fired tear gas into them. The United Nations had warned publicly against these executions days earlier. Ordinary Iranians standing in a square in the early morning, unarmed, telling their own government that killing these two was a shameful thing: that is not a headline about a distant enemy, that is a picture of conscience surviving under a boot. We can hold two truths together. We cannot adjudicate every charge from here, and a government that hangs young men in public, before witnesses it has to gas, has told us exactly how sure it is of its own justice.

Let the groans of the prisoners come before you; according to your great power, preserve those doomed to die. Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute; judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy. Pray for the eight men still waiting under sentence, for the families of Abolfazl and Amirhossein, for the Iranians brave enough to stand in that square, and for believers in Evin and every prison where faith is a crime. Ask God to preserve those doomed to die.

"Let the groans of the prisoners come before you; according to your great power, preserve those doomed to die!" Psalm 79:11, ESV

"Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy." Proverbs 31:8-9, ESV

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4. Gaza: the famine ends, the line moves, a foreign force is approved

Begin with the mercy, because there was one. The international body that classifies hunger announced on Thursday that the famine in Gaza has ended. All five governorates have come down to crisis conditions from the famine classification confirmed in Gaza City last year, and the monitors credited two things plainly: less fighting, and Israel allowing more aid through. That is a real answer to prayers this newsletter has printed for months, and we should thank God before we say anything else. The gain is also fragile. More than two hundred thousand people remain in emergency conditions one step below famine, most families still do not get enough to eat, and the monitors warned that small disruptions to aid could reverse everything quickly.

The rest of the week complicated it. Israel's security cabinet approved the first entry of an international stabilization force into Gaza, an initial deployment of up to two hundred troops drawn from countries including Kosovo, Albania, and Morocco, to take over a pilot humanitarian zone near Rafah as Israeli forces pull back; the national security minister voted against it and the foreign minister for it. Meanwhile the yellow markers defining the Israeli military zone were moved deeper into neighborhoods from Deir al-Balah to Khan Younis to Shejaia, and families who had already fled more than once loaded mattresses onto trucks again. An airstrike killed two Hamas security officials in a vehicle in Deir al-Balah, and on Tuesday jets destroyed the Al-Muttaqin Mosque in Gaza City, killing one person, wounding more than a dozen, and burning tents where displaced families were sheltering. In southern Lebanon, days after last week's first genuine withdrawal, Israeli forces set off demolition blasts across the border villages. Hunger eased and the map kept moving.

One more piece belongs in the record, because it took a long time to be recognized and it runs counter to what has been shouted in streets worldwide. The United Nations' own humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories has now stated plainly that Hamas endangered humanitarian personnel, intimidated workers delivering lifesaving food, and disrupted humanitarian operations, describing an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence, and obstruction that includes smuggling. The occasion was armed men entering a food distribution point in Jabalia and assaulting two drivers at a World Food Programme warehouse, which forced aid work to stop. Hamas denies it and calls the raid a law enforcement operation. What the wider record describes is a system of control rather than a shortage of goods: aid taxed and rationed through channels Hamas runs, an American-backed distribution effort that paused operations after direct threats against its staff, and Hamas pressing in negotiations to have food handling taken away from anyone outside its reach. Israel's own logistics agency reports that nearly one and eight tenths million tons of food entered Gaza between October and June, roughly three times what the World Food Programme called necessary for that period, and argues the obstacle was never the volume but the management, the taxation, and the circulation of it on Hamas-held ground. This matters for how we pray. Hunger in Gaza has had more than one author, and honesty about all of them is a form of love for the hungry.

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house? Give thanks that bread reached Gaza in enough measure to end a famine, and pray it keeps coming. Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Pray for families displaced yet again by a line drawn deeper, for the hostages and their families, for Lebanese villagers whose houses came down this week, and that any foreign force entering Gaza would serve peace rather than become one more armed authority over suffering people.

"Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?" Isaiah 58:7, ESV

"Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." Psalm 82:3-4, ESV

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5. A red heifer is born in the Golan, and nobody tagged it

Days before Tisha B'Av a red calf was born in the Golan Heights, in a herd belonging to a rancher working with the National Institute for the Study of the Red Heifer. It is the second candidate in about six weeks, following a calf born on a Galilee farm in June and named Temimah, and the institute says two more cows were inseminated at ancient Shiloh in an attempt to establish a sustainable herd. The detail worth reporting precisely is this: no ear tag was placed on the calf at birth, deliberately, because the puncture itself would count as the kind of blemish that disqualifies a heifer from the rite. These ranchers are handling these animals according to the letter of a commandment, and they are keeping records with that seriousness.

It is a candidate and not a certification. The animal must grow to maturity without blemish and must never have borne a yoke, and its coat has to stay red, which is where earlier candidates have failed. This one carries an additional question: it was born as the female twin of a male calf, and in cattle that often produces what breeders call freemartinism, where shared hormones leave the heifer infertile with an underdeveloped uterus. The institute's rabbinic scholars now have to decide whether an internal defect nobody can see from the outside disqualifies an animal from being unblemished. So let us say clearly what this is and is not. It is not a date, not a countdown, and not a clock. It is evidence that some Jewish groups are making practical preparations for commandments that have been impossible to keep for nineteen centuries, and that is worth knowing and watching soberly.

The law required a red heifer without defect or blemish, on which a yoke has never come. Hebrews takes that exact rite and makes the comparison for us: if the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are defiled sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. We can watch Jerusalem with real interest and without anxiety, because the purification we needed has already been accomplished by a spotless sacrifice, and He was not a calf. Pray for the Jewish people in their longing for the house of God, and that their longing would lead them to the One who called His own body the temple.

"This is the statute of the law that the LORD has commanded: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and on which a yoke has never come." Numbers 19:2, ESV

"For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God." Hebrews 9:13-14, ESV

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6. Three hundred thousand flee the fires in France and Spain

Southwestern Europe spent the week on fire. More than three hundred thousand people were driven from their homes as wildfires tore through southern France and central Spain, roughly two hundred and fifty thousand evacuated in France around Bordeaux, more than seventy-five thousand in Spain across Madrid, Toledo, and Avila, and thirty thousand more ordered to shelter where they stood. At least one person has died and ninety-three firefighters have been hurt. Spain declared a national wildfire emergency for the first time in its history and put nearly three thousand personnel, four hundred vehicles, and twenty-one aircraft into the fight, joined by crews sent from Greece, Italy, and Portugal.

The forecast offers no relief: another heat wave is arriving in the hardest-hit areas with no rain behind it. There is something worth noticing in the middle of the smoke, which is that Greeks and Italians and Portuguese sent their own firefighters into another country's emergency. That is what neighbors are for, and it is a mercy that people still do it. Pray for exhausted crews going back into the line, and for three hundred thousand people who do not know yet whether they have a house to return to.

The whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Joel watched fire devour the pastures of the wilderness and the water brooks dry up, and he did not tell his people to explain it. He told them to return to the Lord with all their heart. Pray for the displaced, for the injured firefighters, for the crews arriving from other nations, and for rain.

"To you, O LORD, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field. Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness." Joel 1:19-20, ESV

"For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." Romans 8:22, ESV

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7. America: a voter list blocked, an age gate widening, a power bill negotiated

A federal appeals court this week upheld an injunction blocking the executive order that would have built a national list of eligible voters and restricted mail ballots to the people on it. The order, signed in March, directed immigration services and the Social Security Administration to assemble a state citizenship list; twenty-three states and the District of Columbia sued in Boston, arguing that the Constitution gives the states and Congress, not the President, the power to set election rules. A federal judge agreed in June, and on Saturday the First Circuit upheld him, leaving the order blocked in nearly half the country ahead of November's midterms. Whatever one thinks of the policy, notice the mechanism: an order was issued, states went to court, judges examined it, and the order stopped. That is the system doing precisely what it was designed to do, checks and balances at work, and it is worth saying so plainly in a year when many Americans have concluded nothing works. Though it must be said that lately the only parts of our government that seem to work are the part that collects the taxes and the part that keeps anything from happening.

The identity machinery kept advancing elsewhere, quietly and with almost no argument. This month California signed a law lifting the cap on its mobile driver's license program from fifteen percent of licensed drivers to sixty percent, putting a state credential in the phone wallets of as many as twenty-four million people, and authorizing the motor vehicle department to join a national verification service that checks whether an applicant already holds an identification card in another state.

Age verification belongs in this section too, but it needs sorting rather than lumping. About half the American states, more than twenty-five of them, now require an age check before a person can reach pornography, and the Supreme Court has held that constitutional. Let us say plainly what should not need saying: pornography is not an ordinary part of the internet, and keeping children out of it is not surveillance. It is a fence around a pit, and we are glad of every one of those laws. Rules reaching social media itself are fewer and shakier: eight states have passed them and courts have blocked or enjoined several, including Arkansas, Utah, Ohio, Texas, and Louisiana, mostly on First Amendment grounds, while Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and New York have theirs at least partly in force. Four states now require app stores to check ages, and abroad the European Union has urged its own age-verification system into place by the end of the year, following the French under-fifteen ban we covered last week.

The thing to watch is not the fence around the pit. It is the turnstile going up at the door of everything else: a single general-purpose credential, carried on a phone, checked against national databases, that step by step becomes how a person proves he may speak or read or buy at all. That architecture is being assembled faster than anyone is debating it, and it will be justified by a good cause every single time. The church can bless the fence and still ask hard questions about the turnstile, and it should do both.

One more piece of infrastructure news, and this one is mostly good. The White House expanded what it calls the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, bringing in more than two hundred additional utilities, states, cooperatives, and data-center developers, so that it now covers about eighty percent of the electricity delivered to American homes and businesses. The commitment is straightforward: companies building large artificial-intelligence data centers must fund the generation and the delivery infrastructure their projects require, pay the full cost of the power whether or not they end up using it, and do it through separately negotiated rates so the bill does not land on ordinary households. Whether every signatory honors it is a question for the years ahead, and pledges are not statutes. But the underlying instinct is the right one, and it names something true about this moment: the machines now being built consume so much power that somebody has to be told, in writing, not to charge it to their neighbors.

The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. That proverb is a commendation of courts, of cross-examination, of slow and adversarial process, and it is why we can give thanks this week even about a ruling some of us dislike. The prudent sees danger and hides himself. Pray for judges who examine, give thanks for every law that puts a fence between a child and pornography, and pray for citizens awake enough to notice the wider architecture being built while everyone argues about something else.

"The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." Proverbs 18:17, ESV

"The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it." Proverbs 22:3, ESV

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8. Nigeria at the midpoint: a number we should not look away from

This one is not a single week's headline, it is a ledger, and it came due at midyear. In the first hundred and eighty days of 2026, at least two thousand five hundred and fifty Christians were killed in Nigeria. In the same six months there were roughly two thousand eight hundred abductions, three hundred churches destroyed, and eight hundred people forced to convert. A six-year study by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa identifies militia violence in the Middle Belt as by far the deadliest source, and this year's global persecution index names Nigeria alongside Nicaragua, Syria, and India as places where the pressure on Christians is accelerating.

We put this in the issue because a number that large stops being news precisely when it should stop being tolerable. Two thousand five hundred and fifty people is roughly fourteen believers killed every day for six months, in one country, mostly farmers and villagers whose names never reach us. They are our brothers and sisters, and while we may not know them, God does. The New Testament does not ask us to solve Nigeria or every problem in the world. It asks us to remember them as though we were in prison with them and to help them as we can, which begins with refusing to let the number fade away.

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. Under the altar the martyrs cry, O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long? That cry is in our Bible, and it is not rebuked. Pray for the widows and orphans of the Middle Belt, for pastors who keep preaching where churches burn, for the abducted still held, and for the Nigerian state to do the one thing God assigned it, which is to protect the innocent and punish the guilty.

"Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body." Hebrews 13:3, ESV

"They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" Revelation 6:10, ESV

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Watch and Pray

Pray for the American service members under Tuesday's intercepted missiles, for Iraqi civilians living where the strikes fell, and for the mediators in Doha and Islamabad still carrying messages. Ask the Lord who is not impressed by great armies to give us peace that is actually peace, not a wound healed lightly.

"The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD." Proverbs 21:31, ESV

Pray for the tanker crews under drone attack in the Black Sea and under missiles in the Red Sea, for Kazakh and Russian oil workers idled or endangered by a war not of their making, and for households in poor nations who feel every closed gate in the price of bread. Ask the Lord of the great waters to bring them to their desired haven.

"Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters;" Psalm 107:23, ESV

Pray for the eight men still under death sentence in the Alikhani Square case, for the families of the two hanged on Tuesday, and for the Iranians who stood in that square and said it was shameful. Ask the Lord who hears the groans of prisoners to preserve those doomed to die and to give Iran a government that does not fear its own people.

"Let the groans of the prisoners come before you; according to your great power, preserve those doomed to die!" Psalm 79:11, ESV

Give thanks that the famine in Gaza has ended and pray the aid keeps flowing to the two hundred thousand still one step from it. Pray for families displaced again as the yellow line moved, for the hostages, for Lebanese villagers whose homes were demolished, and that the incoming international force would protect rather than police the suffering, and that every party obstructing food, Hamas included, would be stopped.

"Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?" Isaiah 58:7, ESV

Pray for the Jewish people in their longing for the house of God, that it would lead them to the Messiah who is Himself the temple and the spotless sacrifice. Pray that the church would watch Jerusalem with interest and without date-setting, resting in a purification already finished.

"how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God." Hebrews 9:14, ESV

Pray for the three hundred thousand driven from their homes in France and Spain, for the ninety-three injured firefighters and the crews sent from Greece, Italy, and Portugal, and for the family grieving the one confirmed death. Ask God for rain, and for neighbors who keep showing up for each other.

"For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." Romans 8:22, ESV

Give thanks for courts that examine before they permit, and pray for judges handling election cases before the midterms. Pray for parents raising children online, and for a church awake to identity systems being built quietly, neither panicked by them nor asleep to them. Pray too that the cost of the new machines falls on those who build them rather than on households already stretched.

"The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." Proverbs 18:17, ESV

Pray for Nigerian Christians: for families in the Middle Belt burying their dead, for the abducted still held, for pastors rebuilding burned churches, and for a government that will protect its citizens. Ask the Lord to make us the kind of church that remembers prisoners as though we were bound with them.

"Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body." Hebrews 13:3, ESV

Maranatha,

— Sims Corner Church

Justin Scaggs https://simscornerchurch.com
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Sons of Issachar: July 22nd, 2026