Daly Focus Blog
One single vote.
What difference can it really make? Not much, some would say.
If that’s how you’re feeling on the eve of tomorrow’s election, you’ve probably never heard the story of Jamison Shoemaker, whose one vote set in motion a chain reaction of political moments that altered the course of our nation’s history.
I won’t spoil the story for you here because I want to invite you to have some fun with us on a special edition of our broadcast today.
They pooled their resources to buy a graveyard.
Pastor Fareed Assad was secluded in an underground room with ten members of his leadership team when he issued this ominous invitation:
“ISIS is overtaking our region,” he said. “God may be calling some of you to flee and some of you to stay. Take a week to pray and fast. If God calls you to stay, come back to this location one week from today.”
By some estimates, half the population in Syria is homeless.
The longest drought in the history of American sports is over.
As we all know by now, after 108 years without a championship, baseball’s Chicago Cubs won the World Series last night, giving life-long fans like me a chance to celebrate after a lifetime of frustration, futility, and being the easy punch line to a seemingly limitless supply of jokes.
Simba: Hey Dad, what is a World Series?
Mufasa: I wouldn’t expect you to know, Simba.
By now some of you have received my October newsletter which featured an excerpt from my colleague and co-writer Paul Batura’s new book, “Chosen for Greatness: How Adoption Changes the World.” In his warm conversational style, Paul, an adoptive father himself, tells the fascinating stories of sixteen well-known adoptees.
Included in the book are such familiar names as Apple founder Steve Jobs, First Lady Nancy Reagan, the inventor and botanist George Washington Carver and President Gerald Ford.
Are you feeling jaded about the election in just two weeks? No doubt this has been one of the ugliest and most peculiar political seasons any of us have witnessed. Some of you may even be thinking of not casting a vote on Nov. 8.
I hope to change your mind.
Even when our choices aren’t as clear as we’d like, elections are a God-given opportunity. Asked whether God’s people should pay taxes to a pagan, corrupt government, Jesus referenced a Roman coin.
Many of my conservative friends don’t see eye-to-eye on this year’s election, and I suspect I’m not alone.
Scroll through social media, go to churches across the country – goodness, go to a family dinner table! – and you might see good, sincere Christians with differing opinions on who to elect for president and how to think through the voting process.
For some evangelicals, it might be the first time they’ve faced this level of disagreement with their family or church community over a presidential election.
By the end of Sunday night’s presidential debate, I was struck, like most people, by the sad and sordid spectacle of what has become one of the most acrimonious and distasteful campaigns in contemporary American politics.
On one side of the hall stood the Republican nominee attempting to dismiss his recorded claims of sexual assault on a woman as mere “locker room talk.”
In reality, the actions described in those tapes from 2005 were not just lewd and crude banter.
A new study puts a dollar value on faith in the United States – and it turns out religion is good for the economy. $1.2 trillion good.
Father-and-daughter researchers Brian Grim and Melissa Grim examined how much of an economic contribution religion makes in America, and provided conservative, mid-range and high estimates.
On the low end, looking only at the revenues of faith-based organizations, the figure adds up to $378 billion annually.
That’s a bigger amount than the global annual revenues of tech giants Apple and Microsoft – combined.
Earlier this week the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) – the group that oversees about 460,000 student-athletes and more than 1,000 colleges and universities – announced it was relocating “all seven previously awarded championship events from North Carolina for the 2016-2017 academic year” due to its commitment to “fairness and inclusion” over the state’s bathroom bill.
The moving is sweeping in its scope, though not surprising given our culture’s desire to be viewed by the world as “inclusive” – not “homophobic.”
But the NCAA’s move is intellectually perplexing.
This Sunday the nation will commemorate the 15th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks that took the lives of almost 3,000 people and forever changed our history.
For those of us who watched that day unfold, each anniversary quickly brings to mind the horror and fear we witnessed.
Yet, for many of our children who weren’t even born when 9-11 happened, the day is just event in history.
A news story this week examines how teachers go about teaching today’s generation about an event that feels like “ancient history” to 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.
