Church activities, part 2: Mother's and Father's Day recognitions
The article's next item — having parents stand up on Mother's and Father's Day — gets a long hearing. The room acknowledges real pain (lost children, troubled families, dead parents) but pushes back on the article's logic: 'weep with those who weep... celebrate with those who are celebrating,' and one person's pain shouldn't veto everyone else's celebration. A host describes marking friends' loved ones' death anniversaries on his calendar for quiet follow-up. The article's proposed solution (skip the sermon and recognition, have kids make crafts in children's ministry) is judged to risk making people feel worse.
More on Grief
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Holy Spirit experience: healing, cessationism, and testing the spirits
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The central hard question: is there a normative experience of the Holy Spirit in the world today, and what does it mean for a follower of Jesus?
From No. 593 · Do You Hear What I Hear
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Dear LFTP 3: Mom's false teeth
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Mike reads the letter: the family found their late mother's false teeth — creepy to keep, wrong to discard?
From No. 590 · Theodore Franco
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Dear LFTP: should I attend my murdered niece's funeral?
- Should I attend my murdered niece's funeral after thirty years of family estrangement?
Mike reads a letter from a woman estranged from her brother's family for thirty years whose niece was murdered by her husband in a murder-suicide.
From No. 587 · Coffee After Sunday
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Dear LFTP: AA member who witnessed a life-support withdrawal
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An AA member writes that while visiting a hospitalized fellow member with cookies, he arrived at the exact moment doctors withdrew life support and witnessed the family's raw grief; he now fears he intruded and caused harm.
From No. 568 · Like Jesus