The Storm-Tossed Family Quotes

“That sort of vulnerability means, of course, that bad things are possible. Your parents might disown you. Your spouse might find someone else. Leukemia might ravage your child. The gospel doesn’t hide any of this from you. The gospel doesn’t promise you prosperity and tranquility. But the gospel does promise you that you are never outside the reach of the fatherly providence of God, a providence that fits you with a cross not to destroy you but to give you a future. Your skeleton is safe, even at the Place of the Skull.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“Family is not the gospel. If you think that family is the source of ultimate meaning in your life, then you will expect your family to make you happy, to live up to your expectations.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“At the cross, Jesus aligned himself with those who are abused and maligned and powerless and ashamed. He stood with us, or hanged with us, there. And in that powerless act, he also delivered the deathblow to the reptilian power behind the evil every one of us has experienced. Jesus is not distant from your pain; he is crucified by it—with it and with you.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“The stress levels of a young mother—alone with her husband and children in a city to which they’ve been transferred for work—are quite different than those felt by her grandmother, who would have had far greater financial and even medical burdens, but who also had an extended family and a community of other young mothers just steps from her front door.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“If we seek first the kingdom, we are better able to seek the welfare of our families. If we love Jesus more than family, we are freed to love our families more than we ever would have otherwise. If we give up our suffocating grasp on our family—whether that’s our idyllic view of our family in the now, our nostalgia for the family of long ago, our scars from family wounds, or our worries for our family’s future—we are then free to be family, starting with our place in the new creation family of the church.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“The cross shows us how we can find beauty and brokenness, justice and mercy, peace and wrath, all in the same place. The pattern of the Christian life is crucified glory—this is as true for our lives in our families as in everything else.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“And in both the blessing of rain, and the peril of the storm, we lose all of our illusions of control. Family is like that too: the source of life-giving blessing but also of excruciating terror, often all at the same time.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“You can grieve over your past, but you cannot change it. You can also, though, know that while you are shaped by your past, you are not defined by it. Whoever has hurt you has really hurt you, but they have not defeated you. You have survived. Your life is hidden in Christ. Your future is not that of a victim but of a joint-heir with Christ.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“Sometimes in the exasperation of dealing with an aging relative, one might say, “I hope I don’t live long enough to be a burden on my children!” I will admit I have said this myself, and I did repeatedly until I read an article by an ethicist I admire on why he wanted to live long enough to burden his children. Recounting the way he had stood in a hot shower with a child with croup and had run alongside the wobbling bicycle of his children, this man concluded that bearing burdens is what a family is, as opposed to a group of independent agents contracting with one another.67”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“I have spent time—along with many others—calling people away from the idea of heaven as the idle staring into a timeless light. If we are honest, I will often say, many of us secretly find the idea of heaven boring—a static existence for time without end. In reality, though, I have argued, the Bible does not speak of our future this way. We do not have an “afterlife”—as though our life now is our “life” and what follows is “after.” We have instead the Christian hope of the resurrection of the body. What we have waiting for us is not an ethereal heaven but a joining of heaven to earth—a new creation.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“Even still, the church commendably did not give up on their mission field and sent a third cohort of women who were even older, and the ministry flourished. The women working in the strip club, some of them also prostituted out by predatory pimps, would confide in these old church ladies. The elderly women became their friends. Some of the strippers came to know Christ through their witness. Many more were given an exit route from the trafficking of the sex industry. The church leaders told me, “We saw a change when we sent in women who were not the age of the strippers’ mothers, but the ages of their grandmothers. Almost all of them had conflict with their mothers, but they all loved and missed a grandmother.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“The paper looked a lot like the “lists” he would give us for birthday or Christmas presents he wanted, I thought. And I was almost right. “What’s this?” I asked, with the sort of sing-song voice a father gives to a child when he’s been handed an art project. Samuel said, “Those are all the toys at the store that I also want to take to heaven with me when I die.” I could hardly think of the words to say. Later that night, I lay awake in the bed, and said to my wife, “Do you realize what a failure I am as both a father and as a theologian? I basically lied to my son about the eschaton, and simultaneously taught him to store up on earth the treasures he wants to take to heaven. That’s the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. That means that, in terms of parenting, I am literally anti-Christ.” Maria laughed, and said that I should wash the imaginary “666” from my forehead. But I still slept uneasily, knowing that for all my self-image as a man of gospel courage, my Christian conviction couldn’t stand up to a toy owlet.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“No. The Scripture does not say that everything that happens to you is good, by no means. The Scripture says that, in all things, God is at work for your good, to conform you to Christ. Crucifixion is not good. And yet, even in the cross, God was at work, turning evil against itself, defeating it with its own artillery. You cannot know why you’ve endured what you’ve endured. You can know, though, that you survived. You bear wounds, yes, and they make up part of who you are. When you first encounter the Lord Jesus at your resurrection, notice, though, his hands and his side. They still bear the marks of Roman spikes and spears (John 20:24–29). And yet, he is no victim. He is the triumphant Lion of Judah, the One who is the heir of the universe. In him so are you.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“The late Anglican pastor John Stott argued that he could never believe in God were it not for the cross. As he put it, in a world of such horrors—burned children and battered women and concentration camps and genocides—how could one believe in a God who was agnostic of all of that? Stott wrote that he had visited temples in Asia in which he stood before the statues of a placid, remote-looking Buddha, with arms crossed, eyes closed, softly smiling. His imagination was forced to turn away and to turn instead “to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me!”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“Families, though, are not about us and our presentation to the world. Sometimes what it may take for a child to see the cross in the lives of his parents is to hear those parents say, “No matter what you do. No matter where you go. You will always be our child, and we will always be glad to say so. We may not like what you are doing, but we are not ashamed of you.” This is, after all, the same sort of kindness our Father showed to us, the kindness that brought us to repentance in the first place (Rom. 2:4).”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“A group of researchers some time ago did an experiment in which they read the parable of the prodigal son to groups in various places around the world: Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North America. The researchers would then ask people in each of these settings to recount back for them the story. There was one detail that people in the developing world always mentioned that those in the developed nations always left out: the famine. The son, you will remember, took his inheritance, went to the far country where he spent and squandered it. He only “came to himself” and came home after, Jesus said, “a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need” (Luke 15:14). Those in affluent contexts didn’t remember this part of the story because it seemed to them to be a minor detail. For those who lived regularly with the threat of famine, this seemed to be a major part of the story.56 It is indeed. When dealing with those who are wandering away from the faith, we must recognize that sometimes they will not start evaluating the deep questions of their lives until they find themselves in a situation in which they don’t know what to do. We must be the sort of parents and grandparents and churches that have kept open every possible connection: so that our prodigals will know how to get back home, and know that we will meet them at the road, already planning a homecoming party.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“In talking to a wise older man, I said how haunted I was by guilt in this unresolved conflict. The older man said, “I think the problem is that you are a narrative thinker and you want narrative closure here. You want a plot resolution, and you just have to realize that your life is not a book. You may not ever see ‘closure’ here, and you should trust God with the plot.” He was exactly right. Almost as soon as I saw this, and said to God that I accepted the fact that I may never see this friendship reconciled, my old-and-now-new friend contacted me, with apologies accepted and apologies of his own to offer. That is not a prescription for forcing God to act, just the reverse. In my case, though, I think God wanted me to crucify my need for a life of “plotline consistency” before I would experience the grace of resolution.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“In talking to a wise older man, I said how haunted I was by guilt in this unresolved conflict. The older man said, “I think the problem is that you are a narrative thinker and you want narrative closure here. You want a plot resolution, and you just have to realize that your life is not a book. You may not ever see ‘closure’ here, and you should trust God with the plot.” He was exactly right. Almost as soon as I saw this, and said to God that I accepted the fact that I may never see this friendship reconciled, my old-and-now-new friend contacted me, with apologies accepted and apologies of his own to offer. That is not a prescription for forcing God to act, just the reverse. In my case, though, I think God wanted me to crucify my need for a life of “plotline consistency”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“This is the sad result of the kind of adversary culture, in which the church in our zeal to defend the faith has sometimes unintentionally presented the picture that our interactions with unbelievers ought to be constant arguments. This is not how God dealt with us.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“Authority is not raw power. If someone in the workplace, in a department not yours and of a lower rank, tells you how you are going to do a project, you might well respond, “You don’t have the authority to tell me what to do.” What you do not mean is that the person is incapable of speaking words of instruction. You mean that he doesn’t have the right to direct you. But suppose he were to brandish a gun, and tell you to comply or be shot. You might then do what he says, but that still doesn’t mean that he now has authority to do it. He just has the raw power to force compliance. That’s not what authority is. Authority, biblically defined, is not synonymous with “power.” It does not express one’s ability to do something, but expresses one’s right and responsibility to do it as well.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“Those shaped by the cross, though, will pour themselves out for the next generation in order to say to the child, “Who are you?” and “How did God gift you?” The love of a parent is seldom seen any clearer than when a parent exerts the effort to affirm the gifts and callings of a child, especially when those gifts are different than those of the parent. A hard-driven, corporate-lawyer-of-a-mother shows love to her daughter who is struggling in school when that mother doesn’t expect her child to be the same as she, but delights to see her child come alive in a pottery class or on the tennis court. This sense of belonging means verbal affirmations of “I love you” (as God does, repeatedly, from the skies in the earthly mission of Jesus), but also in narrating back to the child what you see in him or her. The message we send is not just “I love you,” but “I love you”—I know who you are, I see you, and I am pleased with you.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“But coming together for meals is about more than what studies show best equip children to be well balanced (although we care about their flourishing). It is about imitating Jesus, who initiates his people into the family by a regular gathering around the Lord’s Table. As parents, we are seeking to show our children that our end goal for them is a Wedding Feast, not Esau’s scarfed, lonely meal.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“A generation ago, one sociologist warned of the “disappearance of childhood,” which he saw illustrated in the changing nature of children’s sports. He wrote: “Except for the inner city, where games are still under the control of the youths who play them, the games of American youth have become increasingly official, mock-professional, and extremely serious.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“What man and woman, if they ever gave serious thought to what having children inevitably involves, would ever have them?” asked Frederick Buechner. “Yet what man and woman, once having had them and loved them, would ever want it otherwise?” Buechner imagined what it would be like to wish away magically the pain associated with someone he loves. He couldn’t do it, “because the pain is so much a part of the love that the love would be vastly diminished, unrecognizable, without it.”52 Indeed, love for one’s children without pain would be as unrecognizable as a resurrected Christ without nail scars.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“I once had a couple ask me to reassure them that they could adopt without “too much risk.” When I pressed on what they meant, the husband told me that adoption and foster care were scary to him because “you never know who is going to show up.” Now, I’m the first to admit that adoption and foster care bring with them special challenges, and those who step into such arenas should be equipped for them. But it is also true that no matter how a child comes—whether by adoption, foster care, or biological reproduction—“You never know who is going to show up.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“When we see godly older people pouring their lives into younger generations and churches doing the same, there is almost always one common denominator: the older generation is remarkably free of bitterness and jealousy. The younger generation embraces these mentors not because of their perceived “relevance.” These are, to the contrary, often those who do the least to pretend to still be young. Instead, the distinguishing factor is that they are not threatened by those who will replace them. They have a secure identity in Christ, so they are willing to decrease in perceived power and “usefulness” without feeling an existential threat. We find that at the cross.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“That constant biblical call to cross-shaped dependence is why I’ve changed my mind about “baby dedications” in churches. Many of you will not understand what I’m referencing, especially if you come from a Christian communion that baptizes infants. My communion does not; we baptize only those who profess that they believe the gospel and seek to be disciples. As such, I cynically dismissed “baby dedications,” times in a church service when parents would stand with their newborns to dedicate their lives to the Lord, as just a way to do a “dry baptism” for low-church Protestants. As the years have gone by, though, I have seen that these times of dedication fill an urgent need for families and for the church. This is not so much for the children as for their parents, and for the rest of the congregation. The parents crowding around Jesus wanted a word of blessing upon their little ones. In our hyper-naturalistic time, we tend to lose the sense of what a “blessing” is, other than a rote prayer before a meal or spiritual-sounding language that we use to mean “lucky.” The Bible, though, is filled with blessings, blessings that are sometimes wrestled for, sometimes lied about for, sometimes given on a deathbed. A blessing is to commit another to the good purposes of the Lord. Rightly done, a dedication by parents of their children can be a signal that these children do not in fact “belong” to the parents but to the Lord. Moreover, it can be a sign to the rest of the congregation that the rearing of these children is not simply up to the parents on the platform but to all of the gathered body.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“We don’t stop there, though. Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous, and he calls all of us to repentance. What does repentance look like in these situations? Take the worst-case scenario of the unbiblical divorced and remarried couple. They have, in fact, committed an adulterous act in the remarriage (Matt. 5:31–32). What now would we have them to do? Do they repent of this adultery by divorcing again? How can they repent of sin by repeating it, abandoning yet another spouse, breaking yet another set of vows? No. The Scripture does in many of these cases see the act of severing a marriage, and entering another, as an adulterous act. This does not mean that, once entered into, they are not marriages. The Samaritan woman at the well had five “husbands”—and Jesus uses that word.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“The issue isn’t whether sexual immorality is damnable—it is. The question is whether damnation can be turned back, and the cross says it can, by Skull-Hill crucifixion and Garden-Tomb resurrection. The first marriage was between two virgins; that is true. But the primeval one-flesh union reflected something else, something unveiled only ages later in the preaching of Christ. Jesus was a virgin; his bride wasn’t. He loved us anyway.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“The blurring of sexual lines is a sin “against [one’s] own body” (1 Cor. 6:18–20). This does not mean, though, that, like eating too much sugar or smoking cigarettes one is “only hurting himself.” The body, for the one who belongs to Christ, is not his own but is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Sexual immorality is the desecration of this temple. Imagine how horrified you would be (rightly) to see a pagan religion sacrificing a goat on your church’s communion table. Even those of us in lower-church traditions would be outraged. Something set apart for God’s service, something holy, would be used for something unholy, something contrary to the gospel itself. That’s what sexual immorality—of whatever kind—is.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home