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The Leader and People pray responsively In peace, we pray to you, Lord God. Silence For all people in their daily life and work; For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are...

In 1947 huge crowds came to hear a thirty-two-year-old Californian preach at mass evangelistic rallies throughout China. Although Bob Pierce had no knowledge of Chinese language or culture, his messag...

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...

The family has long been a haven in a heartless world, the one place immune to market forces and economic calculations, where the personal, the pri­vate, and the emotional hold sway. Yet. . . that is ...

God our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing a...

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...

I sustain myself with the love of family.

I’m convinced some company today could make a killing if it had the guts to market dysfunctional greeting cards. Most birthday or holiday cards gush with flowery sentiments such as, “To the greatest f...

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring close-knit family in another city.

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...

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

One day, as Leo Tolstoy, the renowned Russian author, was walking down the street when he encountered a man in worn, shabby clothing. The homeless man asked him if he had any money to spare. Tolstoy s...

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.

Father of heirs and orphans, Salvation of saint and sinner, Draw near and forgive us. Forgive us for clinging to law more than grace. Forgive us for choosing slavery when you offer us adoption. Forgi...

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

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...

Over the past few years, I’ve often heard parenting and child development experts offer the charge: “Give your kids a childhood they don’t have to heal from.” I’ve heard its echoes even in my own comm...

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...

John Fiske, a Harvard scholar, once visited Herbert Spencer, regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of his time in England. During their conversation, Spencer asked about Mrs. Fiske and the chil...

Gracious God, we come before you with humility, recognizing that doubt has led our decisions. We have allowed fear to lead, rather than love. Because of this, we have been unkind to our families, our ...

When I was a child, my father brought home a twelve-year-old boy named Roger, whose parents had died from a drug overdose. There was no one to care for Roger, so my folks decided they would raise him ...

It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res...

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

In a television commercial for Facebook, a large, gregarious family sits down to a meal. It is a Norman Rockwell moment. In our positive associations to family dinner, myth and science come together. ...

We have set our hope on you, our living God, as those who set course for home from distant places. But we need your help if we are to keep on course: we need fresh sight of you, on which to check our ...

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...

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.

In What’s So Amazing about Grace?, Philip Yancey offers an updated version of the parable of the prodigal son. Growing up in the countryside in Michigan, a young girl rebels against her old-fashioned...

Almighty God, giver of life and love, bless N. and N. Grant them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexi...

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...