Daly Focus Blog
What does true happiness look like?
Is the concept of happiness even biblical?
I’ll never forget the trip I took to Jakarta, Indonesia, many years ago for a speaking engagement. If you’ve never been there, it has some of the worst smog of any city in the world. My eyes burned, and breathing was difficult after being there for only a short time. The traffic is notorious. Imagine Los Angeles and New York combined and multiply all of that by a factor of 10.
Several years ago, Christianity Today ran an article suggesting I was waving the white flag of surrender on biblical marriage in the culture.
I wasn’t waving a white flag at all. I was simply saying that, if you look at the statistics, a growing number of people under 40 – both Christian and non-Christian – now support same-sex marriage. That entire demographic has emerged as a motivated voter block. I felt then that this cultural viewpoint would win the day in the fight to redefine marriage, and daily news headlines over the past year have only validated my concerns.
The latter half of marriage ought to be a couple’s golden years, but quite often it’s dull, disengaged, and lifeless. That might be why a growing number of marriages are ending after 25 years or more.
It’s called the “graying of divorce.”
A recent survey from Bowling Green State University showed that prior to 1990 only 1 in 10 people over the age of 50 divorced. But in the years since 1990, that number has grown to 1 in 4.
“Take time to smell the roses.”
It’s a well-worn phrase. But phrases like that endure for generations because their wisdom is so profound. In this case, that simple bit of near poetry reminds us that we tend to miss the richness all around us because we rush so quickly by the flowers of life that we never notice their color, their beauty, or their wondrous fragrance.
Popular guest, Vicki Courtney, told me of one springtime when she was pushing her grandson along in his stroller.
In my role as president of Focus on the Family, I have the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people – from heads of state to ordinary people who’ve achieved extraordinary things.
Over the years, one thing has been affirmed again and again in my mind – people are what life is all about.
Dr. John Maxwell puts it this way: “God is in the people business, so we should be in the people business.”
Here at Focus, we take that directive seriously.
Some time ago I blogged about the “ideal” family size – does it matter how many children a couple has? In it, I took a look how many kids Americans think are ideal and why fertility rates are declining.
A recent article from The Washington Post brought that post to mind because it examines why some couples decide to have larger families.
According to Pew Research Center, 15 percent of all U.S. adults have had four or more children – and, as it might be expected, faith seems to play a role in the size of some families.
When I think of today’s and tomorrow’s radio guest, Sarah Kovac, I’m reminded of a story I once heard about two people strolling along the beach.
One was blind, the other was not.
At the top of a large sand dune, the blind man stopped and breathed in the salt air. “Isn’t this absolutely beautiful?”
“How can you appreciate any of this?” the sighted man asked.
The blind man smiled. “Can’t you feel the warmth of the sun or the sand between your toes?
Intimacy and sex are not the same thing.
That comes as a surprise to a lot of newlyweds. Most younger couples enter marriage thinking sex will be the easy part of their relationship … and feel caught off guard when it becomes one of the most complex. They don’t know going in that struggles related to sex are one of the top reasons for marital conflict.
That’s because newlyweds tend to assume they both want the same thing out of their sexual relationship.
When was the last time you shared your faith with someone?
I ask, not to shame those of us who haven’t talked to anyone about Christ in quite a while, but to draw us back to the journey.
We hesitate to talk to people about the Lord for any number of reasons. Maybe certain aspects of witnessing don’t fit our personality temperament. Or we don’t know what to say. Or we don’t feel we’re a good enough person to adequately represent Christianity.
In 1995, employees at the five-story Sampoong department store in Seoul, South Korea, noticed cracks developing on the top floor around one of the support columns. Despite warnings from civil engineers, the store’s owner refused to close the building for repairs.
It was a minor problem, he insisted.
In reality, the crack was merely a symptom of a much larger structural failure. That became evident on June 29 when the entire building collapsed, killing over 500 people and wounding nearly 1,000 more.
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.
