Family Living

Managing a Financial Crisis

Gail Gilman

Family Life Consultant, M Ed , C F C S and Professor Emeritus

University of Minnesota

What you need to remember:

Addressing family financial problems is complex because it is not just about dealing with dollars and cents It is about dealing with finances, feelings, and relationships and how their interaction is played out in our use of money

Addressing financial problems means paying attention to how our values, attitudes, motivations, and expectations are played out in how we use money

If you are putting money toward what you value, then you will usually feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment If that money is going toward something you do not value, then you will usually experience a sense of frustration and futility

Family strategies to address financial problems include individual reassessments Also, family members may compete for those resources due to conflicting goals

What you can begin to do:

People often feel several distressing emotions in the initial stages of a financial crisis Those emotions include helplessness and hopelessness Feeling trapped sometimes occurs because you believe there is nothing you can do to change the situation

Acknowledge feelings and reframe the situation: How you perceive or see a problem or situation affects how you deal with it How much stress you experience in a situation depends on the intensity of meaning you attach to it

Reframing is the process of reinterpreting the meaning or significance of an event It means seeing things from a different perspective An example of changing or reframing priorities is going from “What we are losing is the most important part of our lives” to “Our family and our health is the most important part of our lives

$500 scholarship awards provided by the Adolph and Emily Lokensgard Scholarship Trust Fund and the Nicollet County Farm Bureau now available

Applications are now available and being accepted for two, $500 scholarship awards provided by the Adolph and Emily Lokensgard Scholarship Trust Fund and the Nicollet County Farm Bureau To receive an application, please contact the Nicollet County Farm Bureau by emailing nicolletcountyfarmbureau@gmail com or by calling (612) 756-4421 The application deadline is April 1, 2023

Applicants must be a high school senior or an undergraduate college student and be enrolled or planning to enroll on a full-time basis in a postsecondary school and major in or demonstrate a strong interest in the field of either Agriculture or Family and Consumer Science Submitted applications must be complete and include a transcript of the applicant’s grades or a grade report with a cumulative GPA on the report

The scholarship recipients will be notified in early summer The scholarship awards will be presented at the Nicollet County Farm Bureau organization’s 2023 Annual Meeting in early September

Pastor's Corner Column

Pastor Paul Meitner Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church

Going back can be a good thing

I will admit it I am a bit of an antiquarian I love old things I still write all my sermon studies out in the long-hand, cursive writing instilled in me by Miss Hawkins in that tiny, two-room school where I received my elementary education I still prefer reading an actual book to feel it in my hands to smell the paper, then flip on the glowing, pixilated screen of a glossy Kindle or Nook e-reader

One of my favorite pastimes is walking the woods of Fort Ridgley State Park, looking at the ruins of the fort reading the fascinating inscriptions of some of the older grave stones in the adjoining cemetery and letting my imagination run wild picturing the Dakota hunting their ancestral lands, the French fur traders trapping them for beaver, and the German, Norwegian, and Swedish immigrants clearing them for farms But those days are done, right?

I mean, historical imagination is one thing, but it would be foolish to encourage modern farmers to trade their Case or John Deere combines for a team of oxen and an old-time plough It would be foolish, indeed, damaging to all of a sudden go back to land-line, rotary phones, travel by horse and buggy, and reverting to a hunter-gatherer society This is where my antiquarian disposition clashes most violently with that most American of American traits – the belief that the future is always brighter than the past, and we must keep pushing forward to that gleaming hope at all costs

We live in a time where many powerful, well-connected, and educated people sincerely believe not only we should push forward into the future, but it is our moral duty to excise from our present day every vestige of the past that might prevent that glorious hope we envision Indeed, I see a growing chorus in our society that treats the past as unwanted wreckage that needs to be cut away or it will drag us down to a watery grave in this present storm And this is not limited to technology, per se, but to any attitude that could possibly slow down our progress toward our future hope

That places me in an awkward position My whole ministry is to daily turn people toward a past event that all Christians confess changed the entire trajectory of the future It is not a pastor’s job to make Jesus fit the times, but to make the times fit Jesus and the salvation he wrought for us But frankly, after 21 years, I must admit that I have been doing a pretty bad job at that After all, under my watch, I have seen church membership drop from 70% to 47% in this country, and the bottom does not appear to have dropped fully out yet

Is my congregation headed for the same fate as St John’s Lutheran of Fort Ridgley Township, which has disappeared from the landscape but for a well-kept cemetery? In my youth, society did their best to court the church Today, society does its best to keep the church at arm’s length, and more often than not holds up its nose in disgust at its “oppressive” teaching Indeed I find that the general attitude today is that Christianity is a force standing in the way of progress It either must changes with the times, or it will be committed to the dustbin of history along with the hoopskirt, the chariot, and Phrenology

I stand at a crossroad What am I to do? Well, perhaps before following the conventional wisdom, I should give Scripture one more reading: This is what the Lord says Stand at the crossroads and look Ask about the ancient paths Ask where the good road is Walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls (Jeremiah 6:16)

The future of Christianity does not lie in its popularity That should be clear from its central event– the crucifixion of Christ It should also be clear in Christ’s own words to his followers: If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me It should be finally clear from the history of Christianity It has been the most persecuted faith in history, and even today, 80% of religious persecution in the world is against Christians

The future of Christianity does not lie in its past achievements, such as the enshrining of the rule of law in codes of justice, the establishment of hospitals and advancement of medicine, the fight human rights, the value of the freedom of expression, the creation of the university, and the abolition of the slave trade I believe all these things are good, but there are many kingdoms and societies that value none of these things and have gotten on quite well without them Christians are fools if they think that the blessings produced in the past will buy them good-will in the future

So, what is the future of Christianity? Well, is it not this – when we go back to the cross, when we go back to that singular event in human history, what is it we find? We find rest for our souls There is no other place where a person can find their sin their shame their guilt dealt with before God in a manner that results in their redemption and the satisfaction of God’s holy justice The future of Christianity is, and will always be found when we go back to the promise given in Eden, the promise made to Abraham, the promise made to Israel, and the promise fulfilled on the cross: that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life

The future of Christianity is to get back to the past- people who gather around the forgiveness of Christ, and then, in view of that redemption, go and tell others what they have heard and seen, living out their faith regardless of what the society around them is doing or offering Why? Because when we view the world from the standpoint of the cross, we find true hope and a future We find not one that might be there, but one that is there – for Christ has gone into death for us and returned, to bring us through this life to the glory he has prepared, one that can never perish, spoil, or fade

One Christian writer put it this way, “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither ”

So, there you have it- the future of our faith lays, and always will lay, in the past It lay in the promise that Christ made us through his innocent suffering and death on the cross, and his glorious resurrection and ascension in heaven The world may change its language, its politics, its philosophy with the frequency that a teenager flips through the music of its Spotify account, but it is the old, unchangeable path of salvation, planned in eternity, forged at the cross, where our future is to be found