Daly Focus Blog
Never let it be said that one teenager can’t make a difference in the lives of millions of other girls.This past spring, Julie Bluhm, 14, of Maine, began petitioning the editors of Seventeen to stop altering the images of the girls pictured in the magazine.
“Here’s what lots of girls don’t know,” Bluhm wrote. “Those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake. They’re often photo shopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin.
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: pop culture
Be Still
One of the most difficult things in life is to be still. There is so much noise – the noises of the world, exaggerated by television, radio, and so on.
Noise!
But you have to be still, you must stop, you must be isolated, you must think.
You cannot meet with the Lord in the midst of the noise and the bustle and the fury of life. You may be a very busy person, but stillness is still possible.
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: events
When the late Dale Carnegie released How to Win Friends and Influence People in October of 1936, the $2 book sold over 100,000 copies its first few months on store shelves. Seventy-three years and 15 million copies later, the title and its content remain timeless.
Why?
At the time of Mr. Carnegie’s death on November 1, 1955, the obituary writers of the The New York Times drew the following conclusion:
Mr. Carnegie’s advice for successful living might be summed up in two of his maxims: “Forget yourself; do things for others,” and “Cooperate with the inevitable.”
Isn’t that great?
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: faith
All it takes is a 30-second perusal of the supermarket tabloids to confirm what you already know:
There is an excessive, if not obsessive, draw to celebrity in the culture. From Tim Tebow to Kate Middleton to Kim Kardashian, people are drawn to certain individuals, for any number of reasons.
But a fascination with the famous is by no means a new phenomenon. It manifests itself differently today than 50 years ago, but human nature is still the same.
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: news, pop culture
The wise person, as he grows older, must turn to the perfecting of his creative and appreciative abilities, which mellow and improve with age. He must take inventory of his personality, realizing that whatever it is now, so it will tend to be in later years, multiplied many times.
[If you want to grow older happily] Ask yourself these nine determinative questions:
Am I self-centered, or do I take other people’s needs and desires into account as well as my own?
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: discipline, faith
Possibly one of the most devastating things that can happen to us as Christians is that we cease to expect anything to happen. This may be one of our greatest troubles today.We come to our services, and they are orderly, they are nice – we come, we go – and sometimes they are timed almost to the minute. But that is not Christianity, my friend. Where is the Lord of glory?
Where is the One sitting by the well?
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: church, faith, family
If you had only a few minutes to gather up a few select treasures of your life before fleeing a raging inferno, what would you take – and what would you leave behind?
Families in Colorado Springs were faced with this very question this past Tuesday. In just a matter of minutes, a wildfire that had been contained in canyons bordering the city swept down through the hillsides. The sky, which had been sunny, turned red.
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: family, news
In a post last week, I mentioned the many disasters that seemed to befall TV’s Brady family while on vacations. From losing Bobby in the Grand Canyon to getting locked in an old jailhouse, all on the same trip, one might be left with the impression that a family getaway is akin to playing with fire.
Why even bother going anywhere?
We go because trips can be a lot of fun. I have some great memories as a kid going from here to there in the car.
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: entertainment, family, parenting
There were two dogs throughout my youth, a pug named Sir George and a Great Dane named Duke. I guess the Dalys felt a certain kinship to English royalty, even as I poured Kool-Aid over my Cheerios. (There wasn’t always enough money for milk.)
Duke and Sir George were my sister’s dogs and so in many ways, I had the best of both worlds. I enjoyed playing with them under the warm California sun, but never had to feed or tend to their needs.
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: kids, parenting
It’s not a trick question. When it comes to two single people of the opposite sex sharing a meal or a movie together, when does it become a “date” – as opposed to just two people of the opposite sex sharing a meal or a movie together?
A group of my colleagues and I were talking about this the other day. The consensus seemed to be centered on the matter of money.
If the guy pays, it’s probably a date.
Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: intimacy, marriage
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.Home
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