So much of the early development of faith occurs before children can even articulate what is happening within them. For them, things are happening in the background of the familiar, the ordinary, and the mundane. As a Montessori teacher and a mom of faith, I have come to realize that as important as teaching is, … Read more
“Why?” It’s a question I hear dozens of times a day from my toddler.Why does the moon follow us?Why did Jesus become a baby?Why can’t I eat all the berries at once? (Because, dear child, you could eat an entire grocery budget’s worth of berries at once.) His questions are relentless, unpredictable, and sometimes exhausting. But … Read more
“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” – Psalm 127:1 I am Donna Sweeting, and I have the joy of serving as the Project Director of Faith-filled Families, a Lilly Endowment–funded initiative awarded to Virginia Theological Seminary and housed in its Department of Lifelong Learning. It is indeed a blessing … Read more
More than five years into life with our spring-loaded third child, who wakes up (and often wakes us up) at Indy Speedway volume and with Psalm 57:8b urgency[1], we have reached a magical moment: he begs to leave the dinner table to sit in the living room and read silently to himself. We did not see this … Read more
I distinctly remember having a conversation with my husband when our children were very young and I was a stay-at-home mother. I said, “I don’t get a yearly review and I definitely don’t get a raise, so it won’t be until they have grown and flown that I will know whether I have done a … Read more
On this day, May 1, the Church celebrates the Feast of two apostles, Philip and James the Less. James’ title as “the Less” or “Minor” is not a statement on his importance, but instead likely refers to his age or height. It also distinguishes him from his fellow apostle James, the son of Zebedee and … Read more
Last year the Lilly Endowment awarded Virginia Theological Seminary a generous grant to launch a new initiative called Faith-filled Families: Christian Practices for Abundant Parenting. There are many components of this initiative, and one of them included adopting Grow Christians. So this online community moved from our home at Forward Movement to the Center for … Read more
“But dad, Jesus is God’s son. So Jesus can’t be God, too!” I thought I’d get a longer grace period before having to explain the Trinity to my kids, but the question above, posed to me recently by my four-year-old while reading a book before bedtime, shattered that hope. Before I knew it, I was … Read more
The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, in our modern world, are a source of delighted excitement, building anxiety, and abject stress for so many families.
There are times in each one of our lives when we must choose between holding tightly to our convictions or loosen our grip on them.
