My friend’s son is having a hard time with this unique time of isolation. He’s frustrated, angry, sad, and scared. He misses his friends, his school, his Sunday School teachers, and going to the park. Every day in the morning, at meals, and before bed, his mother encourages him to pray for the emotions he is having and for the struggles going on in his little mind. Children are called to participate in the kingdom of God. They are not excluded from Jesus and His ministry.
We long for deep community. We strive for healthy and helpful relationships with family members, church people, and neighbors. But if we’re honest with ourselves, especially as parents,...
We are now entering the one time of year in our world that is focused on being generous, giving back, and serving our neighbors. Bell ringers at stores, social media posts of friends...
Healthy youth ministry extends past the congregation and into teens’ homes. When we considered what young people need, Scripture, research, and youth leaders all pointed to parents as...
Scripture guides us, teaches us about salvation, and communicates the kingdom of God to us. In daily family life, we ought to ever turn to the Word and to works that keep the Word as...
Psalm 119:15–16 states, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.” When I read this verse, I cannot...
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your...
My wedding anniversary is coming up. Every year midsummer, I think about the vows we made and how we continue to live out those vows. And if I’m being honest, sometimes I think about how...
32:53In this episode of The Concordia Publishing House Podcast, Elizabeth Pittman is joined by Christa Petzold, author of the new curriculum Journey through Church History. Christa explores why we should s
We’ve all felt the struggle. When you’re sitting in an awkward waiting room, when your kid asks you the same question over and over, when you’re tired at the end of a long day—we struggle...
“Daddy! Daaaaaaaaaaaa-deeee! Daaaaaaaa-daaaaa! Dada! DADA!” My two-year-old cries out in the middle of the night. We can hear her over our audio monitor getting more frantic. She is...
I’ve attended what seems like a lot of funerals over the past few years at my church. More and more of the names in funeral announcements are familiar, particularly as the generation...
May isn’t just the month of Mother’s Day; it is also Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month. Before I became a mother, I thought that the conversation surrounding maternal mental health...
In college, I attended a Bible study hosted at a pastor’s home. One week, he said our homework was to make a list of our biggest questions about faith, and we’d discuss them and seek...
God doesn’t make mistakes—His plan is perfect, His execution unparalleled. When the fallen nature of the world and all of humanity comes into play, however, the exquisiteness of His...
It was a month or so after our second child was born, and my almost two-year-old decided he wanted to join the rest of the family and stop sleeping too. Fighting bedtime, skipping his...
I’ve never been a person who really relied on or noticed patterns in my life. I never struggled with feeling too scheduled or the opposite feeling of overwhelmed with no structure. That...
The vocation of parent is the ultimate paradox. It is at once viscerally sweet, compelling, and satisfying—and then also just not. Not at all any of those things. In fact, parenting is...
“In 2024, I plan to . . .” Fill in the blank. Maybe you’re hoping to exercise more, eat healthier, start a new job, go on a big family trip, spend more time with your spouse, spend less...
I never had any interest in watching the 1946 James Stewart Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, until college. Many adults and teens in my life had droned on about how boring they...
We say the word thanks a lot in a day. We thank our spouse for filling up our coffee, we end emails with the word thanks, and we thank people for holding the door for us. As parents, we...
