Daly Focus Blog
This Friday my family and I will travel to Zambia to participate in Camp Life, a week-long camp for orphaned and vulnerable children in the southern African country.
The need is overwhelming. So many adults have died from HIV/AIDS that half of the country’s 15 million people are under the age of 16. Of the 6.5 million children in Zambia, more than 1 million of them are orphans.
Zambia has the highest per capita orphan rate in the world.
What’s your name?
I don’t mean your given name. I’m asking about your real name, the name that defines that sense about yourself you most deeply believe – your identity.
Some of you go by the name “wealthy businessman,” “bread winner of the home,” or “perfectionist.” Your identity is about performance and earning your worth. Others of you have names like “failure,” “disappointment,” or “unworthy.” Your life has been shaped by the message that you don’t live up to people’s expectations.
What happens when a researcher tries to measure the parent-child bond using the same standard yardstick for both moms and dads?
Dads lose.
That’s what Dr. Kathryn Kerns discovered when she talked to teens and preteens about their parents.
But something wasn’t adding up: the kids were describing “rich, warm relationships” with their dads. So why weren’t the fathers scoring better?
Because the researchers were using the wrong yardstick.
Turns out you can’t evaluate dads the same as moms, because fathers parent their children very differently than mothers do.
Men have a special role in the family.
They show their daughters what to look for in a future husband and how a man should treat his wife. They show their boys how to be a committed husband, a loving father, and a man of integrity.
At least that’s what we’re striving to do.
We don’t always hit the mark, but I can tell you, there are a lot of good men out there. They’re dedicated fathers and husbands who are committed to their families and work hard to instill strong values in their children.
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.
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.
