Daly Focus Blog
I saw a video that powerfully illustrates the incredible influence that fathers have in the lives of their daughters. It captured a dad in his living room, watching a basketball game. He jumped and yelled in support of his favorite team.
Right beside him, his three-year-old daughter copied his every move. She jumped when he jumped. She clapped when he clapped. She even copied his expressions of excitement.
Then the mood changed. The dad started shouting at the television.
As someone who spent time in foster care as a child, the plight of our nation’s children who find themselves detached and unsettled outside their biological families is of great concern to me.
In fact, according to the most recent statistics, over 443,000 kids in America today find themselves somewhere in the foster care system. There are names behind that huge number, and every one of them represents a little world that hangs in the balance. Like you, I’m deeply grieved to know that many of them feel as though their future is bleak and hope is in short supply.
Does your marriage stress you out?
If not, there’s still a good chance that you’re bringing stress into your marriage.
Either way, how do you handle it?
The natural inclination for many couples is to seek stress relief in non-relational ways that enable them to hide from each other – things like drugs and alcohol, or even behaviors like shopping, gambling, excessive cleaning, or binge-watching television – all of which lead to addiction, unhealthy obsessions, or lashing out at other people.
Being pro-life means much more than being against abortion. Our value statement on the sanctity of human life reads:
We believe that human beings are created by God in His image. Therefore, every person, from conception to natural death, possesses inherent dignity and immeasurable worth – including preborn children, elderly individuals, those with special needs and others marginalized by society. Christians, then, are called to defend, protect, and value all human life.
Author and speaker Emily Colson has lived the truth of that statement up close and personal.
Years ago, a friend asked Asheritah Ciuciu if she was excited that the Christmas season had arrived.
“Actually, no,” she said.
Christmas had both a joyful side and a dark side for Asheritah. She and her parents lived in Romania for ten years during the communist regime while her father pastored five churches – one officially recognized church and four underground churches. They lived under intense persecution and death threats.
Asheritah’s childhood Christmases had so many hard memories that she grew up wanting the season to be over with as soon as possible.
As the old maxim goes, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
And according to a recent Pew poll, the majority of Americans think churches should do exactly that as far as public policy is concerned. Nothing.Most Americans believe churches should not get involved in politics. The Pew Research Center found that 63% of Americans say houses of worship should keep out of political matters. Only 36% said churches should express views on social or political questions.
Emmy Award-winning sports journalist and former ESPN producer Jason Romano remembers the day he got the phone call. How could he forget?
On the other end was his father, who was in tears with terrible news. Patty, his second wife and Jason’s stepmother, had been killed in a house fire. Jason was devastated.
Then he discovered it was all a lie.
His father had been drunk and made up the whole story. For money? For sympathy?
Pastor Ted Cunningham says, “Social media is a place where people share their opinions without sticking around for the conversation.”
He’s right. A lot of people like to share their opinions, but few like to listen. Beyond social media, that’s also a big problem in marriage, in parenting, and in interactions with friends and extended family.
Listening has become synonymous with approval, agreement, and wholesale acceptance of someone’s opinion. The natural response, then, is to talk over people and to express our point of view to the exclusion of all others.
Skyscrapers are amazing feats of engineering. They need to be strong enough to resist the forces that come against them, like gravity and wind. That’s why skyscrapers are built with steel.
They also need to be flexible enough to withstand the forces that come against them … like gravity and wind. That’s why architects design skyscrapers with a certain amount of sway.
Strength and softness. The two sides of a superstructure. Two sides of love as well.
When you think of a family tree, you think of strong branches that represent generations of your family reaching to the sky.
But what do you do when those branches are broken by the storms of life? How do you become a good husband or wife, or a good father or mother, when your past has been marked by abandonment, divorce, or the death of a loved one?
My family didn’t have a family tree. We had a “family bush.” My mother died when I was nine years old.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
