Daly Focus Blog
Good fathering isn’t about good intentions. It’s about action.
Years ago, a friend of mine lived next door to a family consisting of two children, a mom, and a dad who struggled to take action. That became clear the day he came home with an aluminum fishing boat he’d bought for a couple hundred bucks. It was nothing fancy, but he looked forward to getting out on the lake each weekend, so his kids could fish and swim.
Dear Friends:
Nearly 60 million people tuned into last night’s presidential debate in Philadelphia between Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.
But what I’m writing to you about today is about neither political candidates nor political parties. Not even the Election. I’m reaching out to you about abortion and our ongoing quest to save preborn babies.
One of the more pointed parts of last night’s exchange involved the now half-century plus debate over the sanctity of life.
Research shows an estimated 70% of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives. Trauma can range from divorce to abuse to a global pandemic – something we all experienced. Even everyday stress has a cumulative effect.
Dr. Gregory Jantz is founder of The Center: A Place of Hope in Edmonds, Washington, a renowned treatment center for depression. He says when his clinic opened years ago, he “didn’t fully understand that most ailments and afflictions people deal with can be traced back to trauma of some kind.
Ron and Opal Erickson call themselves “musicianaires.” Ron is an accomplished steel guitarist, and Opal is an accomplished vocalist. They’ve made beautiful music together for over 40 years, not only as musicians but as a couple.
But they only achieved that because they’ve rebuilt their marriage out of the rubble of a relationship that seemed irreparably broken. Through God’s grace and wisdom, they survived adultery, rejection, and betrayal and created a new marriage forged in trust, love, and grace.
What holds you back from achieving more than you do? Money? Time? How about excuses?
If anybody had a reason to make excuses, it was Paul Richard Alexander. As a child, polio paralyzed him and severely damaged his respiratory system. From age six until he died at 78, Paul was confined to a machine called an iron lung – a medical contraption that enabled him to breathe.
The machine kept Paul alive. but it also imprisoned him.
What would you like your obituary to say about you? If you want to feel confident in what those final words say, you may want to write them yourself.
That’s what Pennsylvania schoolteacher Ashley Koozma did. She faced a losing battle with cancer and wrote her own obituary, explaining what she discovered about life by contemplating her death. She closed her reflections with these words: “What do you value in life? In the end, that’s what matters.”
Ashley is right.
“We are grateful that President Trump was not seriously injured in the the tragic shooting at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania this afternoon. We are praying earnestly for Mr. Trump and his family and the loved ones of the bystander who was killed and ask our fellow Christians to call on our mighty and merciful God to comfort all those affected.
While the full details of what occurred are still rightfully being carefully investigated, it is in no way premature to call for Americans of all ideological perspectives, Republicans and Democrats alike, to commit to bringing greater civility to their advocacy in the public square.
Political party platforms matter.
Once the product of smoke-filled backrooms, they cast vision, identify opportunities and problems, and suggest practical, legislative, and executive solutions.
Given that a right to life is a fundamental truth, both the Republican and Democrat party platforms should reflect a national commitment to innocent preborn life.
Support for life first appeared in the 1976 Republican Platform and included a call for a human life amendment, which would have banned abortion and saved the nearly 60 million lives that have been lost since that bicentennial year.
Today’s celebration of Juneteenth – referred to by some as “America’s second Independence Day”– has only been a federal holiday since 2021, but dates to 1865.
It was on June 19, 1865 when Union forces sailed into Galveston Bay in Texas to enforce the end of slavery.
At the time, there were 250,000 slaves in Texas – and none of them knew that nearly 4 million other American slaves had been emancipated when the Civil War ended two months earlier.
I had the privilege of being in France yesterday as the country observed the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion on D-Day. It was a sobering and inspiring experience.
If you’ve seen the coverage on TV, you know that many world leaders were on hand, represented at ceremonies at Normandy and elsewhere: President Biden, French President Emanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Britain’s King Charles III, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky among them.
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.
