Some Thoughts on Discipline – 14th January 2009

As much as we may want to, discipline cannot be drowned, or made to disappear. It lifts it’s head every day in the growing stubble on our faces, or in the overflowing garbage can, or in the fine film of dust that accumulates on our furniture. When the heart is tired, discipline will even haunt a man until he either cracks completely or he submits himself to it’s incessant demands – only then perhaps he might see, not it’s punishments, but it’s purpose in shaping a man. Then perhaps too when all it’s well known constraints have been buffeted to no earthly effect, we may discover “behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch over His Own” (James Russell Lowell, in The present Crisis). O Lord, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow (Psalm 144)! God’s rhythmic symmetry is seen in the presence of constancy in all created things. The relief one feels at the constancy of day and night ought at least to be matched with a readiness to learn of it in our daily schedules, and who knows, that we are not being taught the lessons needed to rule angels. The man who looked after his 10 talents was soon applying the fruit of his discipline to 10 cities. Pulling the blanket over our heads in times of duty is no sensible catharsis. A man discovers soon enough that joy comes only from willing obedience, which reminds me of that  line in Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino that says, “The things that haunt a man the most are the things that he isn’t ordered to do.” God guards the course of the just and protects the way of the faithful, as Solomon wrote, “Then we will understand what is right and just and fair – every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul… wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men… Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil… My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in” (Proverbs 2:8 – 3:12).