What America’s Retirement Anxiety Reveals about Trusting God with Tomorrow

25 Bible Verses about Grief for Finding Comfort in Sorrow and Loss

A few years ago, my dad did some clever detective work and found out something shocking about Charles Spurgeon’s dad: He went to prison. It turns out Charles’s father, John Spurgeon, a shopkeeper, was imprisoned at Chelmsford Gaol on January 30, 1837, for failing to pay his creditors. Charles would’ve been just 2 years old at the time, and it looks like the cot he slept in as a baby was among the items sold to pay off the debt. Prisons at the time were grim, and to be imprisoned for debt was humiliating. We can only imagine the enormous stress this must have put on the family. It’s also worth saying that John may have simply been unfortunate. It was shockingly easy to get into financial difficulty in Victorian England. Geoff Chang has helpfully shown the historical relevance of this finding. It explains why Charles was raised by his grandparents from such a young age and why John so sternly warned his son about the dangers of debt—which also explains why Charles repudiated debt. But it’s a devotionally rich finding as well. This unlikely ground zero for the greatest preacher of the 19th century reminds us of wonderful truths. 1. God can work your failure for your child’s good. John’s failure was a trial but not a disaster for his young son. Charles was separated from his parents for five years, but in God’s providence this was profoundly formative. He loved his grandparents, and it was with them in Stambourne that he observed up close a male role model who was a preacher, not a shopkeeper. It was here he gained a love for Puritan literature, later returning every summer to devour his grandfather’s library. Charles came to consider it such a formative season that he wrote Memories of Stambourne, his final book, which he was determined to finish despite ill-health. It’s one thing to trust God’s hand on your own life; it’s a different magnitude altogether to trust God’s hand for your kids. We want to rescue and protect them, and it’s hard not to overfunction in our role. It’s one thing to trust God’s hand on your own life; I find it’s a different magnitude altogether to trust God’s hand for your kids. John was a godly man who likely felt the same parental pressure. When his shop went under, he must have felt he’d let his whole family down. Little did he know that what looked like total disaster would, in the end, serve to incubate the calling of one of the world’s greatest preachers. So it turns out that Romans 8:28 applies to our kids as well as to us. For parents like me who constantly fail, this is an enormous relief. 2. Past failure doesn’t rule out future fruitfulness. What’s more often overlooked is that John went on to become a fruitful preacher and pastor. His first job out of prison was as a merchant clerk. Over time, he got more involved in local church ministry, eventually becoming pastor of Tollesbury Congregational Church from 1850 to 1863. Under his leadership, the congregation grew from 25 to nearly 500, and his successors had to expand the building. What a stunning turnaround. This must have been far beyond what John could have possibly imagined for himself all those decades earlier in Chelmsford Gaol. Charles was, in almost every respect, inimitable. But his dad was an ordinary faithful pastor whom God used for fruitful gospel work. In the end, the Spurgeon family scandal reminds us that even extraordinarily impressive ministries like Charles’s can have grubby, messy roots. And it shows us that God can make ordinary pastors out of prisoners. God can make ordinary pastors out of prisoners. Charles, rightly, didn’t see the need to expose his father’s failure in his lifetime, but its coming to light in the modern age helps us trace with joy a new line of the hidden hand of providence: a God who works out all things for the good of those who love him. As Joni Eareckson Tada puts it, “Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”

What’s the point of making art when a machine can do in seconds what it takes a human years to learn? That question sits at the heart of this Silicon Spiritualities episode with Brett McCracken, senior editor at The Gospel Coalition and a perceptive writer on faith, media, technology, and culture. In our conversation, he helps us see that AI threatens not only jobs or industries but also something deeper: our sense that the process of making, wrestling, waiting, and learning might actually matter. Great art, he argues, is never just about the polished final product. It’s also about praise, patience, formation, and the personal gift one human being offers to another. We talk about why wisdom is more than information; why AI can imitate emotion without sharing in human suffering; and why boredom, solitude, and even daydreaming may be among the most important human habits to protect in an age of constant optimization. Brett also reflects on the attention economy and the subtle ways our desires are being shaped by technologies designed to keep us looking, clicking, and consuming. Resources Mentioned: The Wisdom Pyramid by Brett McCracken Scrolling Ourselves to Death by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman The Shallows by Nicholas Carr Resonance by Hartmut Rosa The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen On the Death of Daydreaming by Christine Rosen The Wisdom of Sleep by Brett McCracken REGISTER for our six-week cohort, Get Ready for the Age of AI, where you’ll get an exclusive, early, free copy of the book The AI Apocalypse, featuring Watkin, McCracken, and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble. PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity. JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners. Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

Whenever God’s will and God’s ways are being done in you and through your life as you rely on Him, you are bearing fruit.