Daly Focus Blog
You remember the story of the Prodigal Son. Traditionally, it’s told from the point of view of the younger son who demands his father’s money and comes crawling home in shame after he squanders it all.
But I wonder if we should call it the story of the prodigal sons. The older son stayed home, but he didn’t have the heart of his father. He rejected his brother and wouldn’t even come to celebrate that his younger brother had been rescued from the clutches of death.
When author and counselor Dr. David Clarke speaks to parents, he humorously asks if children are a gift from God … or instruments of slow torture.
His answer: both!
He tells parents they’re fighting three wars:
With their own children. Kids are wonderful gifts from God, but they’re fiendishly inventive at getting their own way.With their spouse. Most couples find out after their first child is born that they have different parenting styles.With the culture. Everything from the entertainment industry to social media to public policy makes parenting children increasingly difficult.
“Maybe D.A. and Elicia shouldn’t get married.”
A lot of friends and family must have thought that about D.A. and Elicia Horton … even the drug dealers on the corner. No kidding!
One night two months before their wedding, D.A. and Elicia got into yet another terrible argument. This one was the worst in a long string of them, however, because what started as a disagreement inside quickly escalated into a six-hour screaming match outside. It was so bad they say drug dealers moved their business further down the road because D.A.
Frank Pastore knew his life’s purpose early on. It was to be rich and famous. If you accumulated all the right stuff on the outside, he thought, you’d be happy and fulfilled on the inside.
For a time, he thought he was on track. He got a big contract to pitch for the Cincinnati Reds, bought a home and a Porsche, and planned to set records over the next 10 to 15 years. He was on top of the world, rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest players in the history of the game.
“You’ll never walk again.”
That’s what a doctor told author Eva Whittington Self only a few months before her high school graduation, after she was paralyzed in a car accident.
She was driving along a snowy country road one night when she rounded a curve and had to swerve to miss another car coming toward her. She lost control, and her car crashed through a bridge railing and disappeared over the edge. In the wreckage below, Eva remained conscious and knew she had lost all feeling in her legs.
See if this scenario sounds familiar.
Your son is playing with his toys when you stop by and tell him it’s time to clean up his room. You walk away, but instead of complying immediately, your son keeps right on playing.
A few minutes later, you return and discover that your instructions have been ignored. How would you respond?
Many moms and dads respond by exploding in anger.
The question is why? There’s no reason for a child’s ignoring simple instructions like “clean up your room” or “take out the trash” to make a parent’s blood boil, and yet it often does.
Our world fosters individuality. Think about it – we drive home at the end of the day, close our garage doors behind us, and live our individual lives. Oftentimes, we are within 100 feet of our neighbors – yet we know very little about them.
We have a high calling on our lives. How do we communicate the love of Jesus in this post-Christian world? And how do we model the example of hospitality found in Acts 2?
The heat of summer is on, which for my family means camping.
We love getting outdoors. We love parking our fifth wheel in some remote location where the sounds of nature are not drowned out by cars and busyness.
When there’s a lake nearby, the first thing my boys do is grab rocks to throw into the water. And the bigger the better. For them, it’s all about the splash.
Me? I’m intrigued by the ripples.
“I’m pregnant!” is supposed to be good news, the kind that most would-be moms celebrate.
Not Jennifer Polimino. Her moment of incredible joy was tarnished by feelings of guilt and shame from her past, the result of abuse that steered her in the wrong direction.
At age 12, Jennifer was nearly raped by a group of boys that hung out with her older sister. Jennifer was with them in an apartment with little furniture and no electricity.
“…and they lived happily ever after.”
Most of the stories you heard in childhood probably ended like that. It’s the stuff of fairy tales with Prince Charming and damsels in distress.
Living happily ever after is also the hope of every couple standing at a wedding altar. Here’s the problem: happiness is an emotion – and a fickle one at that. It comes and goes with nearly every change of circumstances.
When good things happen, we’re happy.
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.
