Jim Daly

An Excess of Democracy?

Life is beginning to return to normal in the Daly house following Tuesday’s historic election.

By “normal” I mean it’s been three days since our home phone rang five times during dinner with candidate robo-calls and our mailbox was overstuffed with campaign flyers!

The pundits will continue to analyze Tuesday’s results and draw their subjective conclusions. I have mine; you have yours. At a Wednesday press conference, President Obama qualified the outcome as a “shellacking” – a candid admission by any measure.

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Win a Trip to London!

Our team here at Focus on the Family has been working on a terrific contest to help celebrate the launch of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a Focus Radio Theatre production based on the C.S. Lewis classic, The Chronicles of Narnia. Our award-winning Radio Theater weekly program has been rereleased to the national radio airwaves this fall.

As for the contest: I’d love to share some details about it with you and hope you’ll consider passing this blog on to your friends and family.

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The Day After

I’m on my way to California today. Tonight, I’ll be in Palm Desert speaking to a group at the Desert Springs Church. Tomorrow, I’ll be addressing a wonderful gathering of pro-life supporters at a pregnancy resource clinic banquet in Newport Beach. These are true stalwarts. One of their clinics (in Long Beach) is literally situated between two abortion providers. In this year alone the facility has saved 191 babies!

On a related note, results from last night’s mid-term elections are continuing to roll in.

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Thoughts on Election Day 2010

Have you voted yet?

If not, why not?

If you have, what was the scene like at your polling place? Or did you vote early or by mail this year?

I was thinking the other day about the first time I ever voted. It was in 1980 and I was living in California. I was 19 years-old. I pulled the lever that year for Ronald Reagan. You might think that was an easy decision, but at the time, I was faced with something of a personal dilemma.

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How to Fight Fair

I am not a music aficionado by any measure, but somebody recently reminded me that it was the old British rock group, The Kinks, who once popularized the following lament:

Well I met a pretty girl, as pretty as can be
I thought she was my baby till she introduced to me
A great big tall fella, about six foot tall
I shivered and I shook, couldn’t do any more

‘Cause I’m a lover not a fighter…

It’s just a silly song, of course, but I think this idea, that lovers can’t be fighters, is, in many ways, a faulty concept that’s been culturally ingrained.

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Halloween and Christianity

This coming Sunday is October 31st, a date of historical significance on several levels, depending upon your faith tradition and cultural upbringing.

To many Christians, October 31st is remembered and revered as “Reformation Day”, a key date in Church history. It was on the last day of October in 1517 when Martin Luther wrote a letter to the Catholic Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting, among other things, the sale of indulgences. He had other complaints, too, and what would become known as the “95 Theses” were nailed to the door of the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in Wittenburg, Germany.

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Know That You Don’t Always Have to Know

When Lee Strobel quit his job as a Chicago journalist back in the late ‘80s and joined Willow Creek’s pastoral staff, his colleagues wondered if he had gone off the deep end. From a professional standpoint, his decision struck them as strange: His job was a dream come true and, in fact, the culmination of a pursuit that began as a kid when he founded and published a neighborhood newspaper at age 12.

He was committing certain career suicide, they told him.

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The Way to a Stronger Marriage

I’m headed to Atlanta this morning to participate in Focus on the Family’s Celebrate Family Tour. Tonight’s event is featuring the hilarious comedian, pastor and teacher, Mark Gungor. Mark is one of the most sought-after speakers on marriage and family in the country. If you’re in the area and would like to attend, please know we’d love to greet and host you this evening.

Before I go, though, I wanted to invite you to listen to today’s broadcast.

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Who is Raising Who?

To even suggest that children help raise their parents sounds like something out of the progressive parenting phase of the 1970s.

But, hold on.

However provocative the premise, yesterday’s and today’s guest on Focus on the Family, Dr. Dan Allender, is about as far from advocating for permissive parenting as you can get. With his Masters of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Michigan State University, Dr. Allender’s advice is biblical and practical, if not somewhat counterintuitive.

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Wins and Losses

I was reminded yesterday that even when your team loses, you can still enjoy a winning weekend.

My brother-in-law, Jon Kingdon, is a scout for the Oakland Raiders. Our family loves and admires him, but because of our affinity for the hometown Denver Broncos, there’s always been a fair amount of teasing between us. (For non-football fans, the Broncos/Raiders rivalry is legendary and dates back to the 1960s. In fact, the Broncos and Raiders have met on Monday Night Football more often than any other matchup in MNF history.)

As it was, the Raiders came to town this weekend to play the Broncos.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: entertainment, family, parenting, pop culture