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help kids cope with pandemic
CTTrain Up a Child
2 min.Read

20 Ways Christian Parents Can Help Their Kids Cope with the Pandemic

Christianity Today
By Christianity Today

You’re not the only one feeling the press.

Little eyes, little ears, little bodies, and tender souls are doing their best to process this COVID-19 experience alongside their parents – with far fewer tools.

Try as we might to conceal it from them, a new “homeschool life,” coupled with a new work-from-home-world, or worse, a “no-work-at-all-world” – positions anxious children in full view of life’s troubling complications.

While we likely have ways of processing the noise, it’s entirely possible that our children might be overlooked in the missionary equation that lies before them.

Continue reading…

Here are 20 suggestions on how to help your children to process the pandemic:

  1. Ask them individually about what they are feeling and thinking about the pain they observe so you can grow in attentiveness to their unique needs;
  2. Pray with and for your children and speak courageous words of hope as you pray;
  3. Take one day each week for family worship: share a Scripture passage that is relevant to the moment, provide a single point of application, allow the children to discuss their ideas, and pray together;
  4. Memorize Scripture together as a family—the message your kids need to hear is the same message you need as well;
  5. Model neighbor-love by finding strategic ways to care for your neighbors who are hurting or alone. Take time with your children to prepare a simple gift basket for neighbors, or pick up and deliver some necessary groceries;

  6. Teach children to be a blessing to others by making crafts, writing cards, or scheduling calls with those who may need an encouraging touch;

  7. As the economy reopens, frequent local businesses and allow your kids to hear stories of the impact of the virus on everyday people they see regularly. Offer to pray with employees in front of your kids;

  8. Make allowance for shortened attention spans if you are watching a church service online. Take time to pause the video and help children process what they are hearing with a question of personal application;

  9. Process grief with children—allow them to feel the emotions of life in a fallen world even if that is simply mourning the loss of school or a big event they were looking forward to; Prepare them for adulthood where disappointment is normal and maturity is reflected in the ability to persevere through pain;

  10. Look out for vulnerable children in your community …

Continue reading…

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They Changed Their Minds about Slavery and Left a Bible Record

0
Two businessmen’s unusual conversion in 1700s South Carolina led them to liberate the people they put in bondage. At first glance, William Turpin and his business partner, Thomas Wadsworth, appeared to be like most other prestigious and powerful white men in late 18th-century South Carolina. They were successful Charleston merchants, had business interests across the state, got involved in state politics, and enslaved numerous human beings. Nothing about them seemed out of the ordinary. But, quietly, these two men changed their minds about slavery. They became committed abolitionists and worked to free dozens of enslaved people across South Carolina. When most wealthy, white Carolinians were increasingly committed to slavery and defending it as a Christian institution, Turpin and Wadsworth were compelled by their convictions to break the shackles they had placed on dozens of men and women. In an era when the Bible was edited so that enslaved people wouldn’t get the idea that God cared about their freedom, Turpin left a secret record of emancipation in a copy of the Scriptures, which is now in the South Carolina State Museum. Perhaps it’s not surprising that this story of faith and freedom is mostly unknown. The two men were, after all, working not to attract attention. Neither had deep roots in Charleston or close familial ties to its storied white “planter” dynasties. Turpin’s family was originally from Rhode Island, and Wadsworth was a native of Massachusetts who moved to South Carolina only shortly after the American Revolution. Both had public careers and served in the South Carolina Legislature, but their political profiles were not particularly high. Neither of them appeared to give any of their legislative colleagues the sense that they were developing strong, countercultural opinions on one of the most ...Continue reading...

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