Two hundred years ago, Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) wrote an essay explaining how the old, settled ways of our hearts can change. He titled the article, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” and discussed how to dislodge sinful desires or love of the wrong things. Can you read between the lines of this title to see the great problem we all face? If change requires the force of an expulsive...
We can feel guilty for different reasons. Sometimes we feel guilty about accidents. For example, you’re running the bases playing softball and collide with another player who falls and breaks their arm. Though you feel guilty and the person might be unhappy with you, you have not sinned. When children have accidents, a parent can explain how whatever it was that happened wasn’t the child’s fault...
Talking about race in any setting can be both frustrating and frightening. Add children to the conversation, and you have an entire new set of challenges. Often we don’t know what to say or how to say it and it’s just more appealing to avoid a perplexing subject, but your children are hearing and gaining perspectives on race whether you believe it or not. Honest conversations about race...
As adults, we look for ways to protect our youth. We protect them harm, abuse, bullying, drugs and all kinds of hazards. We can, should, and must look for ways to equip them for the perils that will cross their path. We can try to shelter them from harm, but we will find that the danger our children face cannot always be kept at bay. Scripture tells us: “The good person out of the good treasure...
Not so long ago I was talking with someone who said she’d taken on almost a hundred-thousand dollars of college debt for a degree in the humanities. As an English major myself, I’m all for people studying good and beautiful things, even when they’re not obviously or immediately useful. But the person who’d gotten into this much debt regretted it profoundly. She felt hopeless that she’d ever get...
