Daly Focus Blog
Humorist Erma Bombeck once said, “There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain.”
Chonda Pierce has been tip-toeing that line for a long time. She’s been doing stand-up comedy for 25 years and is the top-selling female comic in history. She has a unique ability to describe life’s most challenging moments all while making you laugh out loud with her humor.
Focus on the Family was privileged to have Chonda as a guest speaker at a recent chapel service here at the ministry.
Today is Maundy Thursday, the date marking the end of Lent and the beginning of the Easter Triduum—the three-day period leading up to Easter Sunday. The term “Maundy” stems from the Latin word “mandatum”—which means “commandment” and alludes to Jesus’ words as recorded in the 13th chapter of John’s Gospel: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
When you think about it, this is the essence of who Jesus is and why He came to earth, isn’t it?
Tomorrow is Good Friday and Sunday is Easter. Those holidays don’t mean much for a lot of families. It’s just another routine Friday followed by a warm spring day where kids get all the candy they want and hunt for colorful eggs.
There’s a deeper significance to those days that many people overlook. I remember years ago, back when video stores were still around. My wife and I went looking for a well-known film that told the story of Easter.
Laura Story and her husband Martin Elvington have often told people that their marriage went from the honeymoon straight to the E.R.! That wasn’t just a metaphor.
Barely two years into their lives together, they thought the world was open to them. They could do anything they wanted to do, and they were happily anticipating all that God may have had in store.
Within a few months of a big move to Atlanta for Martin to attend grad school, he began experiencing physical symptoms that went undiagnosed for nearly a year.
“How much is enough?”
Somebody asked John D. Rockefeller that once. His answer?
“Just a little bit more.”
I wonder if most of us secretly agree with him. We try to be content, but it’s hard with so many shiny things to choose from and advertisers convincing us of needs we didn’t know we even had. We’re easily lulled into believing that we could be happy if we had just a little bit more.
But how much is enough?
As author and speaker Lee Strobel tells it, someone once came between him and his wife, Leslie, that almost destroyed their marriage. It wasn’t a co-worker or an old boyfriend.
It was Jesus Christ.
Leslie had become a Christian. Lee remained a staunch atheist.
Their worldviews were diametrically opposed to one another. The friction that created is why God gave us the sort of wisdom found in 2 Corinthians 6:14, which says, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”
Yokes were heavy wooden implements that were fitted over the necks of two animals, so they could pull a plow together.
Does this visual remind you of your parenting style?
You probably recognize that formula from a math class somewhere in your past. It guarantees that every time you add A and B together, you get C. So 2 + 2 always equals 4, and 1 + 5 always gives you 6. Every time. It’s simple. It’s reliable. It’s predictable.
That certainty is why formulas are the go-to parenting method for so many moms and dads.
The miraculous, hope-filled story of Easter might have been closer to a Shakespearean tragedy if God had left it up to the men.
Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and hanged himself. Peter denied Jesus three times. Thomas doubted the Resurrection. And all of the disciples hid fearfully behind locked doors for three days. And when they were told that Jesus had risen, the message “seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it” (Luke 24:11, ESV).
Parenting can be messy.
From your children’s earliest days, you set boundaries, you discipline, you pour your life into your kids and trust that they’ll be drawn to your Christian faith and embrace it as their own. But one night, years later, your head hits the pillow, and you stare up at the ceiling through the darkness, distraught and wondering, “Where did we go wrong? We raised our kids in church. We prayed with them. We read the Bible to them.
“You may ask, ‘Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why isn’t he landing en force, invading it?’ Well, Christians think He’s going to land in force. We don’t know when, but we can guess why. He’s delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Profound truth like that is why C.S.
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.
