Daly Focus Blog
Job’s friends have endured a lot of criticism through the centuries … and justifiably so.
I’m sure you recall that at the height of Job’s suffering they each, one by one, let loose a barrage of accusations about how Job’s pain and misfortune were all his fault.
Maybe they meant well. Maybe they thought they were offering Job solutions to the mysterious predicament overtaking him. “Who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?
As I told you recently in my blog, I was deeply saddened by the passing of my friend Dr. Gary Smalley almost two weeks ago.
Hundreds of you responded on my blogsite and through Focus’ various social media outlets with your condolences, fond memories, and thoughtful recollections about the countless ways Dr. Smalley positively influenced your marriages and your families.
The Smalley family and close friends are honoring Gary in a memorial service tomorrow in Branson, MO, at the College of the Ozarks chapel at 3PM CST.
Proverbs 31 is the quintessential description of a wise, virtuous woman. She’s God-fearing and lives her life with purpose, diligence, and grace.
But there’s another woman in Proverbs who doesn’t get quite as much attention. She’s found in chapter seven.
In contrast to the Proverbs 31 woman, the Proverbs 7 woman is the prototypical “wild thing.” She’s rowdy and has lost her moorings, deciding she’s going to make her own decisions about how to live her life, about her sexuality, and about how to interact with men.
Quick, name someone, dead or alive, you’d like to have dinner with.
Do you have the name of that person in your mind?
Who is it?
Harriet Tubman? Bill Gates? The Apostle Paul?
Some kids were also asked who they would most like to have dinner with … Watch the video to learn what they answered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wfbY3i4FY0
Parents are the most important and influential people to their children. I hope this video both encouraged you in your job of raising your kids and inspired you to make time for shared meals.
Just a few wayward sparks.
That’s all it takes for a fire to burn through an entire city, as it did in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, one of the largest disasters in American history.
In popular accounts from the time, Catherine O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern in a humble barn on DeKoven Street. What started as a small fire quickly grew into an inferno that destroyed miles of homes and razed Chicago’s business district.
Here’s an important parenting question:
What if your hands were empty, but I asked you to give me one of the apples you were holding?
That’s not a trick question, a riddle, or some odd math problem from your junior high days. It’s a simple question that makes an equally simple point.
We can’t give away something we don’t have.
How does that concept relate to parenting? In this way: We can’t parent our children with God’s grace if we haven’t embraced it ourselves.
I think stories are one of the best ways to communicate life lessons. Cold, hard logic speaks to our sense of reason, but stories engage us at a heart level. Reason may give us the “why” for something, but the heart gives us our “want to.”
It’s why Jesus often communicated through stories. “Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable” (Matthew 13:34).
Dave and Linda’s story is all too common, one that’s repeated again and again across thousands of marriages.
It works like this: They have a disagreement and erupt into conflict. They think they’re angry with each other about the specific issue they’re fighting about, but they’re not. There’s something much deeper at work.
It’s like the time Dave came home from work thirty minutes late. Linda was furious and gave him an earful the second he stepped inside the front door.
Happiness is serious business in America.
Our Declaration of Independence says it plainly: We all have the right to pursue happiness. And pursue it we do. We leave no stone unturned in our search for true happiness.
People marry because they’re happy and divorce because they’re not. Advertisers promise happiness to us if we’ll just buy their car, their beer, or their latest technological gadget.
But do we ever stop and ask ourselves – as believers who live in a land of abundance and opportunity, and who have virtually every material blessing right at our fingertips – why are so many of us miserable?
To go into debt, or not to go into debt?
That is the question – one many college students ask themselves as they think of how to afford a college education.
You hear horror stories about twenty-something college graduates leaving school with a four-year degree in one hand and a load of debt in the other they may spend the next couple of decades trying to repay.
Is it worth it?
And if it is, what’s the best way to keep the debt at a reasonable level relative to future earning potential?
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.
