Tag: Parenting

Links for the Weekend (2025-10-03)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

Shatter Your Kid-Centered Kingdom

After moving back to the U.S. as an overseas missionary, Jen Oshman was confronted by the kid-centeredness of many parents (including herself).

Overseas we had few options for the kids’ schooling and activities. We adjusted to that reality, but I confess often skimming Facebook with a twinge of jealousy as I saw my friends’ kids in ballet, piano recitals, sports games, school plays, and summer camps. Now that we were back in the States, I wanted them to have all of those experiences to make up for lost time.

Aileen’s Picks: Books for the Littlest Ones

Tim Challies’ wife Aileen runs the Early Years program at their church. Here are her recommendations of good board books. (This might be helpful for parents, grandparents, or anyone wanting to bless a family with little kids.)

While there are many wonderful children’s classics that certainly have their place, I began to ask why we weren’t being more intentional about the stories we offered. Wouldn’t it be better to fill these early teaching moments with books that reflect God’s truths?

Tractor Sonnet

Our poem of the week: Tractor Sonnet, by Marie Burdett. This is an enjoyable poem about the work of a farmer on a tractor.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called How the Gospel is Dismantling My Critical Spirit. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

How Short, O Lord?

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

I teach college students, so I know the excitement that mid-August can bring. A new school year is full of possibilities.

My excitement this year is mixed with sadness. My wife and I dropped off our oldest daughter at college this week. She’s not studying on a different continent, but she’s not right around the corner. We’re going to miss her.

Those who know me best know I’ve been anticipating this event with something less than pure joy. (For almost a year I’ve been telling people that I was feeling pre-sad.) But some good friends have recently helped me remember who God is and what this transition represents.

The God of Time

We may not often phrase it this way, but time was one of the things God created and pronounced good. We affirm that God exists outside of time, but he spoke time into being on the first day of creation; we see this in the existence of evening and morning (Gen 1:5).

Time, therefore, was among the “everything” that God saw and pronounced “very good” at the end of creation’s sixth day (Gen 1:31).

So God has created time and rules over it. The days and months and seasons are under his control. And we should also affirm that the fact we have periods of our lives is good. This is the way God has designed our world to work: the earth spins and orbits, the clock hands rotate, and time passes.

The Nature of Seasons

The essence of a season or period of time is that it has a beginning and end. These starting and ending points may not be predictable, but they exist for us as finite beings.

So often we want to hold onto the past and resist the change that time brings. At its core, this is a subtle way of cutting against the grain of creation, of whispering that God may not be governing all things very well.

God wants thanksgiving and remembrance from us. Many of the festivals and worship occasions for believers throughout the ages celebrated what God has done. But rejoicing in what has past is not the same as grumbling that we no longer live there. We remember what has been done so we can live faithfully into the future.

Mourning is Real

The cry of David in Psalm 13:1 is “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” And this is the familiar plea of those who lament. Their circumstances are difficult, maybe nearly intolerable, whether because of illness, sorrow, or persecution. The deliverance they seek is an end to their situation—in essence, they want God to intervene by speeding time up.

I’ve found myself wanting the opposite this summer, essentially praying, How short, O Lord? How short and fleeting are these days with my dear daughter? How will we manage as a family with such a glaring absence? Could you, perhaps, slow time down just a bit?

Not Bad, Just Different

My family is entering a new reality, and some of the sadness I’ve been feeling is mourning the end of a season. No longer will both of my children be at home, available for a conversation just by walking down the hall.

There have been some seasons of parenting that could not pass quickly enough. My wife and I were quite glad when each of our children reached the age of 2. Other seasons (like the one that just ended) are much sweeter, seasons we’re not eager to leave.

But God is good and he governs time well. He goes with his people, including my oldest daughter. God cares for her more than I do, and he will be faithful to her. Though I’m feeling blue this week, I’m learning that turning the page on a season doesn’t make the present worse—it’s just different.

We’re finite creatures made by an infinite God with a longing to be with him. For those in Christ, we will realize this desire one day. Until then, we live as those in time, with all of the accompanying joys and sorrows.

And, this week, some of us will learn how to cheer on new college students from hundreds of miles away.

Post credit | Photo credit

Links for the Weekend (2025-08-08)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

How Can We Help Our Kids Grow in Grace?

Andrea Hoglund emphasizes God’s role in our children’s growth in grace, and she advises parents to “bring them near” and “give them support.”

As parents, we raise little apple trees, souls that bear fruit only with time and patience. Yet how often do we, unlike the farmer, expect to find mature fruit too early as we scrutinize our children for signs of spiritual growth? For all our efforts to train our children well — opening God’s word, bowing in prayer, and worshiping with God’s people — we often find something is missing in the middle of it all: peace of mind.

Want to Grow in Wisdom? You Need Gospel Friends.

Courtney Doctor describes what she means by “gospel friends” and encourages us to seek out friends like this.

Think about whom you most often ask for advice. Do you have a group of friends you go to? Do you scroll social media to see what the “experts” say on any given topic? Do you ask your neighbor, mom, or aunt? What voices have the greatest influence in your life? To faithfully navigate the Christian life, we need more than good advice. We need gospel friends who help us walk in wisdom.

When God’s Promises Feel Untrue

Esther Liu offers some advice for when we read God’s promises in Scripture and they don’t feel true.

How many times have we read a passage of Scripture and had no idea how to make sense of it—not because it was hard to understand theologically or the language was confusing—but because it seemed to directly contradict our life circumstances? It left us wondering, “Does God keep his promises?”

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Contentment Doesn’t Come Through Comparison. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2025-05-09)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

Listening Might Be the Best Evangelism Tool You’re Not Using

When we fail to listen to our unbelieving friends, we end up giving answers to questions they’re not asking.

However, if we don’t also listen, we tend to share the good news of Jesus in a way that applies primarily to our lives, the way it was good news to us, but fails to address the situations others are facing. We can become proclaimers of the good news while remaining ignorant of the ways in which others need to hear it. This doesn’t negate how good the news of Jesus is at all. However, if we read the rest of the story of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman, we find that while her testimony created intrigue, the people in the village had to meet Jesus for themselves. It wasn’t enough for her just to share her story. They had to get to Jesus as well.

3 Truths Your Daughter Needs to Hear About Beauty

Kristen Wetherell’s article offers good counsel to parents, helping them teach young women a biblical view of beauty.

What might change if we emphasized the eternal in our most basic conversations, especially within the family of Christ? What if, instead of commenting on another female’s appearance, we simply said, “It’s wonderful to see you! Tell me how you’re doing today”? Our littlest girls would feel warmly welcomed not because they’re wearing pink but because they’re a valuable part of God’s precious body.

Mirth

The latest issue of Clayjar Review is on the theme of mirth. Here are two poems from this issue I have read and enjoyed.

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2025-02-21)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

Don’t Let Your Fears Hold Back Your Children

Melissa Edgington writes about trusting God in our parenting.

This is why we shouldn’t hold our kids back from going to far away colleges, from pursuing careers outside of the areas where we live, from following the callings that God has placed on their lives just because those callings make us scared. A big part of raising children is God teaching us to trust Him, and when it comes to experiences and adventures that are reasonably safe, we shouldn’t hold on so tightly that our kids aren’t allowed to see what reliance on God feels like. They won’t need to rely on Him if we keep them so bound to our own side that they never have to make a decision or figure something out without us.

Wikipedia Founder Embraces Christianity: Larry Sanger’s Testimony Highlights

It seems the founder of Wikipedia has become a Christian. Trevin Wax has read his testimony and points out a few features from which we can all learn.

Last week, Larry Sanger, the man who started Wikipedia in 2001, published a lengthy essay laying out his journey from skepticism to Christianity. For most of his adult life, Sanger was a committed skeptic, trained in analytic philosophy—a field dominated by atheists and agnostics. Though he spent 35 years as a nonbeliever, he never saw himself as hostile to faith, only unconvinced, and his testimony is geared toward those who share that rational, open-minded skepticism.

Not All Fear Is The Same

Here’s a link to an episode of the Ligonier Ministries podcast Renewing Your Mind entitled “Not All Fear Is The Same.” Michael Reeves speaks about the fear of the Lord on this podcast, and interested readers might want know that the following four episodes of this podcast feature Reeves diving deeper into this topic.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Ask Questions to Expose Idols. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2024-12-06)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

We Need Advent

T. M. Suffield writes about how the waiting of Advent is just the thing we need.

Advent can help us. This is a season of darkness, focused on the second coming of Jesus. It’s a time of waiting. It’s a time to really feel the tension of living in the Between, this suspended moment between what was and what will be. The Church are a people of the Between, a people of gloaming, of the time when it’s neither night nor day, the time between the times.

You’re Exactly As Holy As You Want To Be

This article from Tim Challies is a sobering reminder of our still-being-sanctified wills. We now have the ability to resist sin, but we often put up little fight. This should not only sober us, but our unity with Christ should give us hope.

Yet that’s only partially true. There’s another sense in which each of us is exactly as holy as we want to be. How is that the case? Because there is no one who can force us to sin and nothing that can force us to fail to do whatever is righteous in any given moment. There is no one who can keep us from deriving spiritual growth and benefit from any of the circumstances of our lives. No one, that is, except ourselves. If we ever wonder who is hindering our holiness, we don’t need to look any further than the closest mirror.

Six Questions Our Children Have that Demand Answers

Here’s a look at the sorts of questions our children ask as they mature. The author provides some advice on helpful answers we can supply.

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2024-08-23)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

3 Reasons Heaven Doesn’t Affect Us as Much as It Should

Cameron Cole has lost a child, so these thoughts about heaven are the fruit of going through the fire.

Heightened heavenly mindedness has given me greater contentment, provided strength to persevere in suffering, and inspired me to focus on mission and evangelism. The pain of my son’s death isn’t something I would’ve chosen, and I won’t completely outrun it in this fallen world. But the heavenward shift the Lord brought has been one of the greatest blessings of my life.

How (and How Not) to Talk with Your Kids about Sexuality

It is increasingly important for parents to talk with their children about sex. But the thought of such a conversation can cause anxiety. Here is some wise counsel.

As we think about parenting in this cultural moment, few issues are more urgent and fraught to talk about with your children than sexuality and sex. This is urgent because if you do not talk about it first, the culture certainly will; it is fraught because as our culture changes in how it understands sexuality, it has unhelpfully elevated it to a status that sexuality was never meant to hold, biblically speaking.

How One Family Navigated Smartphones and Social Media in the Teen Years

Here’s another article about parenting, though like the best articles, it has much to offer even to those who aren’t parents. Without insisting on specifics, this family reports the decisions they made and their recommendations regarding technology.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called The Golden Calf Reveals the Goal of the Exodus. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2024-08-16)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

The Healing Power of Confessing Sins to One Another

Lydia Kinne explains why confessing our sins to each other is such a good practice.

Our pride gets in the way of confessing seeds of sin in our hearts. We’re upstanding church members, Bible study leaders, and parents. How could we possibly have given in to that thought or secret habit? So we nod and smile in small group prayer times, asking for more patience and wisdom while skirting around the things we don’t want to admit.

Every Good Parent Will Have Regrets: Advice to My 30-Year-Old Self

Dave Harvey writes some parenting advice to his younger self and it is full of good reminders.

I didn’t realize that a child’s “seeming” lack of progress was the place where parents truly encounter God. We pray, “God, fix them!” Then God whispers back, “Yes, Dave, they’re on my list. But first let’s talk about you.” Parenting didn’t exhibit my strengths; it exposed my limitations. It revealed the dozens of places where I trusted in myself and my leadership rather than in God. Ultimately, it laid me low and revealed my self-trust. But that weakness drove me to Jesus where, in my desperation, I was able to see he had plans for my kids and power for me (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Memento Vivere

Our poem of the week: Memento Vivere, by Christina Baker. It’s a poem about her thinking after an encounter with a rose bush.

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2024-06-14)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

How to Not Exasperate Your Children

Hannah Carmichael wrote a helpful article discussing ways parents often exasperate their children and then what to do when that has happened.

Spending more than 15 years counseling young adults wrestling with the ramifications of how they were parented has prompted me to think deeply about specific parenting behaviors that lead to feelings of anger and discouragement in most children. There’s a type of parenting that crosses the line from instructive and nurturing to oppressive and exasperating. And it’s important we understand the difference both because our parenting has ramifications for our children and because our parenting is a reflection of the gospel.

Don’t Be Half a Berean

Jacob Crouch looks at the example of the Bereans in Acts 17. He notes that these early Christians had two characteristics worth emulating.

When Paul went to Berea, he encountered a group of people who were “more noble” than others in their reception of the gospel. They received the word with all eagerness, and they examined the Scriptures to make sure that what Paul said was true. What a glorious account of these folks, and what a great example to emulate. I’ve loved this verse for a long time, and it has encouraged me often. But, I’ll admit, that sometimes I’ve been only half a Berean.

Monday Morning’s Cupboard

Our poem of the week: a lovely poem about hospitality by Kate Gaston.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called The Sabbath Proclaims the Gospel. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2024-05-10)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

Fulfilling Your Personal Definition of Happiness Is Not God’s Goal

Here’s a great reminder and explanation from Paul Tripp: God’s goal in all of his dealings with you is your holiness.

The message is consistent throughout all of these passages. God is not working to deliver to you your personal definition of happiness. If you’re on that agenda page, you are going to be disappointed with God and you are going to wonder if he loves you. God is after something better—your holiness, that is, the final completion of his redemptive work in you. The difficulties you face are not in the way of God’s plan, they do not show the failure of God’s plan, and they are not signs he has turned his back on you. No, those tough moments are a sure sign of the zeal of his redemptive love.

Social Media (and Overprotective Parents) Changed Childhood

This 8-minute video is worth your time. It distills some ideas from Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation into a short, understandable form. It’s especially timely for parents as they consider how their children should interact with social media and opportunities apart from screens.

Judas in the Upper Room

Our poem of the week: a sonnet from the perspective of Judas at the Last Supper. This is worth some time and contemplation!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here.