September 15: The curious diet of some animals...

Isaiah 19:1-21:17
Galatians 2:1-16
Psalm 59:1-17
Proverbs 23:13-14

13 Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you punish them with the rod, they will not die.
14 Punish them with the rod
and save them from death.

I've been a parent for almost 17 years, and each day I grow in my appreciation for how difficult, oftentimes how frustrating it must have been for my parents to raise me. Growing up, I gave them frequent, almost daily reason to abide by the proverb above - yes, I was that much trouble. They are still waiting for me to get payback from my own children, and can only gaze in slightly irritated wonder at how much better behaved, how much less trouble my three kids are to me combined than I was to them.

Despite how much better behaved, how much less trouble my children are, I still struggle with the need for discipline. There are days I swing wildly from the one extreme - of exasperation, surrender and abdication, to the other - of fear and desperation; from giving up on them, to clamping down on them like an alligator's jaws and shaking some sense into them. And every time that happens, I have to remind myself discipline is to be found somewhere in between, cloaked in the love that wants to "save them from death". It is that judiciousness, that wisdom that I pray for, living in a society that increasingly finds everything permissible, even ideal; a society that eschews and abhors the very concept of discipline - self discipline in particular.

It is when society demands that we conform to its gradual, inexorable deemphasis on discipline that we are fortunate to have the example of Paul who, faced with Cephas's hypocrisy and transgression, did not hesitate to call him out, to correct him, that he and others might not be led astray. I cannot imagine that that made him popular, but it was the right thing to do, and Peter found the balance between frustrated abdication and fearful control.

My parents tell me they are proud of how I turned out. I can only say that I am the way I am because they, too, persisted in finding the balance Paul did, and persisted in disciplining me - despite, I am sure, the many occasions I demonstrated to them why some animals eat their young.

Thanks, Mom and Dad.