Daly Focus Blog
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 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.
We woke up to shocking news Sunday: a man had entered Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the early morning hours and began shooting.
When the carnage ended, 49 innocents were dead, plus the gunman. An additional 53 were wounded.
We’re now learning about the people who were murdered. There’s Edward Sotomayor, Jr., who loved wearing black hats, and 20-year-old Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, who was among the youngest of the victims.
Kimberly Morris had recently moved to Florida to help her mom and grandmother.
“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.
When I think of today’s and tomorrow’s radio guest, Sarah Kovac, I’m reminded of a story I once heard about two people strolling along the beach.
One was blind, the other was not.
At the top of a large sand dune, the blind man stopped and breathed in the salt air. “Isn’t this absolutely beautiful?”
“How can you appreciate any of this?” the sighted man asked.
The blind man smiled. “Can’t you feel the warmth of the sun or the sand between your toes?
It started out as a day filled with eager anticipation for a 3-year-old boy going to the zoo with his mom and siblings. We can imagine the happiness of the Saturday morning scene.
But the carefree adventure quickly took an ominous turn once the family made it into the park.
By now, you’ve heard what happened. Trying to get a better look at the endangered gorillas, the youngster somehow fell 15 feet into the enclosure’s water-filled moat.
When was the last time you shared your faith with someone?
I ask, not to shame those of us who haven’t talked to anyone about Christ in quite a while, but to draw us back to the journey.
We hesitate to talk to people about the Lord for any number of reasons. Maybe certain aspects of witnessing don’t fit our personality temperament. Or we don’t know what to say. Or we don’t feel we’re a good enough person to adequately represent Christianity.
When I hear good people say good things, I like to pass them along. So I want to share three items from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ commencement speech to the graduates of Hillsdale College.
1. Benefits don’t exist without responsibility.
The small farm of his youth taught Justice Thomas that you reap what you sow. There are no crops if you don’t take care of the land. “If we didn’t work, we didn’t eat.
Their friendship started in an unlikely way – with a lie and an arrest.
Jameel McGee was walking down a Benton Harbor, Michigan street when police officer Andrew Collins falsely accused him of dealing drugs and arrested McGee. The arrest – and the phony report Collins filed – led to McGee spending four years in prison. During his sentence, McGee lost everything.
While in prison, all McGee could think of was of getting back at the man whose actions had stolen so much from him.
When I was 9 years old, I was put in foster care. In many ways, it was only another obstacle in a life full of hard knocks.
My parents divorced when I was 5, after Dad threatened to kill Mom with a hammer. My mom soon remarried a harsh man named Hank who loved Mom, but didn’t like us kids. Hank abandoned us after Mom died of cancer. His departure was what landed me in foster care.
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.
