Latest / The Gospel Briefing / Hormuz Closes, DOJ Memo Alarms Advocates — Sun June 21, 2026
Transcript
- This is The Gospel Briefing. I'm Charles King. Today... a strait that controls a fifth of the world's oil may have just closed. A Justice Department memo has disability advocates bracing for a fight forty years in the making. And nuns who spent a lifetime caring for everyone else are asking a hard question of their own. Headlines... Heartbeat... Hope. Let's get into it. [TRANSITION] We start in Switzerland. And in the Strait of Hormuz. American negotiators — Vice President JD Vance, envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner — landed in Switzerland this weekend for what Pakistan's foreign ministry is calling "technical-level" talks with Iran. The goal is to keep a tentative agreement from collapsing. The problem is, it may already be collapsing. Iran announced this weekend that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. That strait is a narrow stretch of water between Iran and Oman where roughly one out of every five barrels of oil on earth passes through every single day. If Iran has truly shut it, the global economy feels that within hours. Fighting has also flared again in Lebanon. And the diplomatic ground under these talks is shifting by the hour. Here's what I keep coming back to. We watch a story like this and we instinctively reach for the geopolitical analysis. Who has leverage. Who blinks first. What the markets will do Monday morning. Scripture invites us to a different posture. Not naive. Not disengaged. But anchored. Proverbs 21:1 says, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever He will." Notice what that verse does not say. It does not say the king is righteous. It does not say the king is wise. It says the king's heart is in God's hand. That applies to the Supreme Leader in Tehran. It applies to the president in Washington. It applies to envoys in a Geneva hotel room tonight. None of them are outside the reach of God's providence. None of them are writing the final chapter. Pray for the negotiators. Pray for restraint. And then sleep tonight, because the Strait of Hormuz is not held open or closed by any heart that God's hand cannot turn. [TRANSITION] Story two takes us home. To a Justice Department memo that has disability advocates deeply alarmed. The DOJ has issued a new legal opinion that, according to advocates, weakens decades of civil rights protections for disabled Americans. Specifically, it challenges the framework that has long treated institutionalization — placing disabled people in large facilities, away from family and community — as a last resort. For context. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Olmstead that unjustified institutional isolation of people with disabilities is a form of discrimination. That ruling reshaped American disability policy. It said, in effect, people with disabilities belong in community whenever possible. Not warehoused. Not hidden. Advocates fear this new memo is the first crack in that wall. Now... Christians can disagree about the policy mechanics here. Reasonable people will. But Scripture is not silent on the deeper principle. Psalm 139 says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Every one of us. Including the child with cerebral palsy. The adult with Down syndrome. The grandmother with advanced dementia. James 1:27 calls the care of the vulnerable "pure and undefiled religion." A society's character is revealed by how it treats people who cannot advocate for themselves. That's not a partisan claim. It's a biblical one. So whatever the legal arguments look like, the church's posture toward our disabled neighbors should be unmistakable. We see them. They bear God's image. And they belong among us. [TRANSITION] Our third story is quieter. But it sits with you. NPR has a piece this weekend about Catholic sisters in Uganda. For decades these women have been teachers in villages with no schools. Nurses in regions with no clinics. Advocates for orphans and the dying. They poured out their lives. And now they are old. Their orders are shrinking. The younger generation didn't follow them in the numbers needed to care for the ones who came before. And so the question hanging over the story is painfully simple. Who cares for the caregivers? I want to be careful here. As a Protestant, I have real theological differences with Catholic teaching on a number of points. But I will not pretend these women have not labored, sacrificially, in places most of us would never go. There's a verse in First Timothy chapter five that gets almost no airtime in modern preaching. Paul tells the early church to honor widows who have devoted themselves to good works, to washing the feet of the saints, to caring for the afflicted. The church, Paul says, has an obligation to those who spent themselves for others. That principle doesn't expire. Anyone in your life who poured themselves out for the kingdom and is now in their twilight years... call them this week. Visit them. Some of the most faithful saints I know are sitting in quiet rooms wondering if anyone remembers. God remembers. And we should too. [TRANSITION] Now to your quick briefs. In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly considering stepping down. Senior Labour figures expect a statement on his future as early as next week. Political power is, as Daniel chapter two reminds us, on loan. God removes kings and sets up kings. Always has. In Ghana, African and Caribbean leaders adopted a nineteen-point reparations plan this week, demanding financial compensation, debt cancellation, and formal apologies from European nations for the transatlantic slave trade. Christians will land in different places on the policy. But the underlying acknowledgment — that the slave trade was a profound evil against image-bearers of God — should not be controversial in any pew. And on a lighter note. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, recently treated with a fourteen million dollar beautification project including a coating of, and I quote, "American flag blue," is now plagued with an algae bloom. Fourteen million dollars. Painted blue. Covered in green slime. Ecclesiastes chapter one is laughing somewhere. Vanity of vanities. Even our monuments need humility. And in Philadelphia, Bryce Harper hit for the cycle and Kyle Schwarber hit three home runs in a fifteen to three rout of the Mets. Sometimes the news is just a good baseball game. Enjoy it. [TRANSITION] When something in your Bible reading doesn't make sense, where do you go? A search engine guesses. Generic AI makes things up. Bible Copilot is a Bible study app that answers your questions from Scripture itself. Open any passage, ask anything, the context, the original Hebrew or Greek, what the verse actually means, and it walks you through the answer, grounded in two thousand years of orthodox Christian teaching. Fifteen questions a day, free. Search Bible Copilot in the App Store. Our verse today is Psalm 146 verses three and four. "Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth. On that very day his plans perish." Envoys in Switzerland. Memos from Washington. Prime ministers in London. Sisters in Uganda who outlived the institutions they built. Every story today is about the limits of human power... and the One whose power has no limit. Thanks for listening to The Gospel Briefing. If today helped you breathe a little easier, send it to one person who needs to breathe easier too. The Strait of Hormuz may close. The King's heart is still in God's hand. I'll see you tomorrow.