Daly Focus Blog
Parents, every day you’re passing on a legacy to your children.
What are you leaving them?
Jean and I have two teenage boys at home, and we think a lot about how we can instill them with the biblical values we know will carry them through their lives.
There are countless ways moms and dads can pass their faith on to their children, a lot of them based on the family’s schedule and each member’s unique personality.
A new study puts a dollar value on faith in the United States – and it turns out religion is good for the economy. $1.2 trillion good.
Father-and-daughter researchers Brian Grim and Melissa Grim examined how much of an economic contribution religion makes in America, and provided conservative, mid-range and high estimates.
On the low end, looking only at the revenues of faith-based organizations, the figure adds up to $378 billion annually.
That’s a bigger amount than the global annual revenues of tech giants Apple and Microsoft – combined.
I’ve needed God to give me a second chance to do His will a few times in my life.
Just one example would be my high school football career. I was my team’s starting quarterback and spent long hours honing my performance and pushing myself to be at the top of my game. Several colleges had offered me scholarships and future opportunities seemed wide open for me.
But God started moving me in another direction the night my big brother came to a game.
It’s a problem so big that some experts are calling it a public health concern. It impacts both a person’s emotional and physical wellbeing.
And while it can affect most anyone, this condition especially targets the elderly.
The problem I’m talking about?
Loneliness.
Complicating the issue of loneliness is that there’s a stigma around it. Some people might think loneliness is due to a “social weakness, or an inability to stand on one’s own,” according to a recent New York Times article on the topic.
Here in Colorado, you can tell that winter is right around the corner. The days are getting cooler, and you can feel it in your bones: that first arctic blast isn’t too far off.
The end of summer has me already longing for spring because once the cold, snow, and ice set in around here, they seem to last forever.
It’s no fun being stuck in winter.
That icy chill is even worse to be stuck in when it describes your marriage.
Last Friday on my blog I shared a troubling trend with you: schools banning Bible verses. Despite students having a clear Constitutional right to include Bible verses in their personal work projects, or with their friends outside of classroom time, some children are finding themselves silenced when it comes to their faith.
However, I also shared a way for students to celebrate their First Amendment rights: the Focus on the Family-sponsored and student-led “Bring Your Bible to School Day,” which will be held on Oct.
Mackenzie Fraiser’s PowerPoint assignment for her sixth grade class was called “All About Me.”
But it turned out her Las Vegas-area public charter school didn’t really want Mackenzie to share about herself. Because when the sixth grader, the daughter of a pastor, included a slide with one of her favorite Bible verses … her teacher told her to remove it.
Mackenzie was told she wasn’t allowed to use “biblical sayings” in assignments. That left the young girl feeling like she wasn’t supposed to talk about her faith at school.
I love sports.
Athletics were always a part of my family growing up. My brothers and I built a solid foundation for life through sports. It’s where qualities like responsibility, discipline, and perseverance were expected of us. Those are skills we’ve honed through the years and carried into adulthood.
But…
As much as I believe in encouraging kids to be active in sports, I think it’s a good idea for families to set reasonable boundaries around their schedule and involvement level.
Earlier this week the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) – the group that oversees about 460,000 student-athletes and more than 1,000 colleges and universities – announced it was relocating “all seven previously awarded championship events from North Carolina for the 2016-2017 academic year” due to its commitment to “fairness and inclusion” over the state’s bathroom bill.
The moving is sweeping in its scope, though not surprising given our culture’s desire to be viewed by the world as “inclusive” – not “homophobic.”
But the NCAA’s move is intellectually perplexing.
“Politics is nothing but an expression of culture, so if politics is sick, it’s because the culture is sick.”
That astute observation was from the late Chuck Colson from a broadcast we aired a few weeks ago. President James Garfield shared a similar concern in 1876 when he said, “The people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it’s because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption.”
In a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” our leadership is ultimately a mirror reflection of the culture that elects them.
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.
