Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11157. Christian grief is often misunderstood, even by Christians, as something that should resolve quickly into a testimony about God’s goodness, as though tears held too long are a sign of weak faith. Paul never asked believers to skip grief. He asked them not to “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11156. Biblical lament is a category many Christians have quietly lost, replaced by an unspoken expectation that a good testimony always sounds cheerful, that real faith does not raise its voice against God in protest, or ask Him hard, unresolved questions. Roughly a third of the Psalms are laments, and that proportion alone should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11155. Funeral planning can feel like an uncomfortable thing to think about while you are perfectly healthy, as though putting it in writing might somehow invite the very thing you are planning for. I understand the instinct, but it has things backwards. Funeral planning done in advance is not fatalistic, it is one of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11154. Preparing for death is not a subject most of us choose to think about until circumstance forces the issue, a diagnosis, a funeral, a milestone birthday that makes the years ahead feel suddenly finite. Yet Scripture treats this preparation as ordinary wisdom rather than morbid preoccupation. Moses prayed, “teach us to number our…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11153. Caring for elderly parents is a season that arrives on almost every family without much warning, sliding gradually from the occasional favour into something that can consume evenings, weekends and, eventually, an enormous share of emotional and practical energy. I have walked with many families in my congregation through exactly this transition, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11152. Christian grandparenting carries a peculiar kind of influence that parenting itself often cannot, because a grandparent usually comes with more patience, less daily authority to resist, and the simple gift of time that busy parents rarely have to spare. 2 Timothy 1:5 mentions Timothy’s sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in his…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11151. Prodigal adult children break a parent’s heart in a way that is genuinely hard to describe to anyone who has not lived it, and I have sat with enough grieving parents in my study to know that generic reassurance rarely helps. What helps, I think, is Scripture’s own most famous story about exactly…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11149. Loving a difficult family member is a task most of us face at some point, whether it is a sibling with a sharp tongue, a parent who never quite listens, or an in law who seems to delight in finding fault. Scripture does not promise us families free of friction. It gives us…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11148. Cutting off family is a question I get asked far more often than I once expected, usually by someone who has already tried every softer option and is exhausted from trying. I want to answer honestly rather than give the easy churchy line that family must always be kept close no matter what,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11147. Honouring difficult parents is one of the hardest commands in Scripture to obey with integrity, because the fifth commandment was never written for families where love flowed easily. Exodus 20:12 says honour your father and your mother, full stop, with no footnote excusing us when a parent has been unkind, absent, controlling or…