helping children find faith
It’s going to be a very Covid Christmas
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Nov 2020
Christmas is not cancelled. I promise. The angel Gabriel will terrify Mary, baby Jesus will be laid in a manger and the shepherds will run through Bethlehem with the good news of great joy for everyone.
Emmanuel will still be ‘God with us’ despite social distancing. In fact, ‘God with us’ will mean all the more this year. The Son of God chose to enter our lockdown, joining us in our struggles by becoming a child in an unsettled family. He gets it.
helping children find faith
How to respond to a crisis
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Sep 2020
During lockdown I was told that there are usually three stages to a crisis. I see these responses in the lives of the families I know, including my own.
1. Emergency response. The first weeks of lockdown. Hard work. Getting by. Running on adrenaline. Late nights. Early mornings. The crisis feels very real. Is our family safe? Is there food on the table? Eventually, we realise that lockdown isn’t ending anytime soon.
helping children find faith
Identity with Christ and in Christ
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 May 2020
An eight-year-old boy walks through his front door in tears. His Christian mum walks in behind him. They are just back from the school run.
He runs off to his room shouting: ‘I’m never going to school again.’ He says he has no friends. He says he always plays alone. Every night he cries, begging his mum to let him stay at home, ‘just for tomorrow’.
helping children find faith
Parenting as God’s children in lockdown
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Jul 2020
I’m finding these days bruising. Between us, my wife and I have eight days of work to squeeze into five days each week. We are sharing the time with our children, so that one of us works in (peaceful) isolation, while the other is a combination of referee, teacher and bringer of light relief to the children.
My particular struggle is disproportionate disappointment when the children demonstrate that they are – children. That is, they are prone to accidents, likely to discourage each other and sometimes lost in bouts of frustration. In short, my children need me to parent them!
helping children find faith
Families opening up the Bible
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Mar 2020
There was a public debate between Professor Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist biologist and Professor John Lennox, the Christian mathematician.
Dawkins started by summarising his greatest problem with Christianity (with a tone of total disdain): ‘[Lennox] believes that the creator of the universe, the God who devised the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics … billions of light years of space, billions of years of time … couldn’t think of a better way to rid the world of sin than to come to this little speck of cosmic dust to have himself tortured and executed … That’s the God that John Lennox believes in.’