Daly Focus Blog
If you’re like most parents with students in the home, the coronavirus pandemic has thrown a real wrench in academic plans – not just for the last two months but even looking ahead to the prospect of summer camps and other nontraditional instruction.
For the last 57 years, our friends over at Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs– led by Jeff Myers – have been helping to equip high school and college students during the summer months to become next generation leaders.
I’m happy
to say that Focus on the Family has been ahead of the technology curve, which
has allowed most of our staff to work from home and continue to minister to
families. But just like you, our staff has had to navigate the uncertain waters
of balancing work and home.
That’s why
we invited popular guest Arlene Pellicane to join us on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Balancing Work and Family Life While Staying
at Home.” She’s got some
great ideas for dealing with what she calls a “blurred environment.” The
boundaries between work and family blur, which makes it harder to keep all the
plates spinning – to be a good spouse, a good parent, perhaps even a good son
or daughter to elderly parents.
This is a sad story – with a sweet and poignant twist.
As most of us slept peacefully on Tuesday night, Jon Coelho of Danbury, Connecticut, passed away from cardiac arrest, a condition attributed to the coronavirus.
He was just 32 years-old and left behind his wife, Katie, and 2 small children.
There’s a common saying that death always comes like a thief in the night, and never more so than when a younger person unexpectedly meets the end of their earthly life.
John Burke
was an agnostic. He didn’t know if there was a God or if the afterlife was real.
The closest he got to spirituality was believing that Jesus was a good teacher
whose life somehow became the stuff of legend and myth.
Then John’s
dad got cancer, and John began to wonder more deeply about life’s big
questions. During that time, someone gave his father a book of original
research that coined the term “near-death experience.” When John read people’s
stories about bright lights, tunnels, and strange visions, it set him on what
became a 35-year quest to examine those experiences more deeply.
The coronavirus pandemic has been very bad for many things – but it has given many parents – myself included – extra time to talk with their children.
Just the other day, I was chatting with one of our sons and a tender subject came up.
It involved the sudden and unexpected death of one of his friends. We’ve talked about it in the past and even prayed and grieved over it as a family, but we’ve probably never discussed it as deeply or as meaningfully as we did this time around.
Most
Americans have been on virtual lockdown since March. Everything from sports to
restaurants have been shut down for weeks. The one thing we haven’t lost is our
screens. Which means a lot of us have filled our days with video games and
online shopping while we binge on Netflix.
I get it.
This is a stressful time, and a little distraction is good for us. But spending
nearly every waking moment in front of a screen isn’t.
We’re
several weeks into the coronavirus outbreak, and by now you’ve memorized a
dozen methods for keeping your body’s immune system strong.
But what are
you doing to keep your marriage strong?
When we’re
stressed, we strike out at the people closest to us, namely our spouse and children.
That’s especially true when you’re cooped up together under quarantine. Good
marriages can be strained, and bad marriages can be stressed to their breaking
point.
A couple’s
differences can either serve as triggers for conflict or as points of tension that
can strengthen the relationship.
A
lot of people wonder, “Can God truly be good, even when He allows pain and
suffering in my life?”
That
question deserves a serious, thoughtful answer. To that end, we’ve invited Dr.
Larry Crabb to join us on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Trusting God When We Don’t Understand His Ways.”
Dr.
Crabb is author of the book When God’s
Ways Make No Sense. He has some
timely thoughts about how faith can anchor our lives in the midst of uncertainty.
Charles Dickens got it exactly right in the opening sentences of A Tale of Two Cities. He said, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness.”
Those iconic words were written over 150 years ago. They could have been written this morning. Or 1,000 years ago.
Civilizations rise and fall, but every generation faces the same fundamental paradoxes: Love and hate.
Do you and your family find yourselves watching more movies and television these days?
If so, please don’t forget to check out Focus on the Family’s new streaming service, Focus@Home.We’re adding new content every day, including some wonderful special material for Easter from our friend Ray Vander Laan, perhaps best known for his teaching in our rich and meaningful series, That the World May Know.
We’ve also added The Truth Project, our award-winning Christian worldview series from Dr.
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.
