family on Isolation

If anything, there appears to be an inverse relationship between our growing obsession with the home as a totem object and the disintegration of families that has become the chief social phenomenon of...

Leader: Heavenly Father, You do not want anyone to suffer in darkness or separation, but rather for everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. As members of your family, may we remembe...

Who is David Beckham? Is he the self-absorbed, fame-seeking, Calvin Klein underwear model, husband of a former Spice Girl, always looking to be the center of attention? Or is he something else? Were ...

Precious Lord, take our hand, Lead us on, help us stand; We’re tired, we’re weak, we’re worn; Thru the storm, thru the night, Lead us on to the light, Take our hand, precious Lord, Lead us home. The o...

Gracious God–Giver of all good gifts: We praise You. You give us the wonder of creation and You give us life. We praise You, Father. You give us forgiveness of our sins with salvation and eternal life...

We have been so soaked in the individualism of modern Western culture that we feel threatened by the idea of our primary identity being that of the family we belong to-especially when the family in qu...

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

I made my family disappear.

Two men were marooned on a deserted island. One man was pacing back and forth, terrified that no one would ever rescue them. The other man was sitting against a tree, shading himself comfortably and r...

Systems are perfectly designed to get the results they are getting.

A recent book, The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times , says that private family life is no longer, as historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch named it, “a haven in a heartless wo...

A man goes to see a psychiatrist. He says, “Doctor, my brother’s crazy—he thinks he’s a chicken.” The psychiatrist says, “Well, why don’t you bring him in?” And the fellow replies, “Oh, I would, but w...

The secret of every discord in Christian homes and communities and churches is that we seek our own way and our own glory.

An individual doesn’t get cancer, a family does.

Family and property, then, were not for the ancient Jew simply what they are to the modern western world. Both carried religious and cultural significance far beyond personal, let alone “individual,” ...

The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.

Brothers and sisters, you are no longer strangers to God, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ ...

One could imagine a comparison between a car’s oil drain plug and its electronic ignition system. One is as low-tech (and unimpressive) as could be, while the other is highly sophisticated. But a car ...

The term patrilineal has to do with tracing ancestral descent (and therefore tribal affiliation and inheritance) through the male line. In Israel the possessions of a particular lineage were carefully...

To a true child of God, the invisible bond that unites all believers to Christ is far more tender, and lasting, and precious; and, as we come to recognize and realize that we are all dwelling in one s...

Your well-being is more dramatically affected by the people you see every day, people who live within a few blocks of your house, people who live within a few miles, than it is by distant connections.

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world bu...

The homelessness of these people, in other words, led them to a “new home”: the family of God, in which they found social acceptance and protection.

How Do We Deal With Jesus? Jesus’ own family asked the question. The Pharisees asked it as well. Both groups arrived at slightly different answers, but their aim was essentially the same⸺to shut Jesu...

In her excellent little book ( Mythical Me ), Richella Parham describes how her meditation on the Trinity helped her escape the comparison and competition trap: The relationship among the Father, So...

How Do We Deal With Jesus? Our lectionary passage this week forces us to ask this question. Jesus’ own family asked the question. The Pharisees asked it as well. Both groups arrived at slightly diffe...

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on acc...

Robert Lewis so pointedly asks in his book The Church of Irresistible Influence , if your church closed its doors today, would anyone but its own members notice?

When modern psychiatric and psychological researchers began studying addictions, they realized that most of the time, the addict does not live in a vacuum. Instead, he lives in a system of relationshi...