Loving Means Discipline

Okay. This is not really connected to any recent events (except that discipline is a continual "event" around our home with three kids in "PRIME training years" as I say). My thoughts were prompted by a great devotional by Elisabeth Elliot, where in part she says:

"My parents loved us enough to make us wear galoshes (those awful things with black metal clasps) when "nobody else had to wear them"; to see to it that we got five meals a day (three for the body and two for the soul, the latter including hymns, Bible reading, and prayer); to say no to things like candy or coming in when we felt like it, or skipping piano lessons and church; to give us chores to do around the house and to make it clear that if we didn't do them they wouldn't get done; to give us an allowance even during the Depression and teach us that some of it belonged to God; to stick by what they had said--line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. They drew lines. We knew where they were drawn. They didn't move them. They knew more about life than we did, and had a fairly clear picture of what was good for us. Like other kids we complained that they didn't love us or they would do so-and-so. "When you have children of your own," Mother would often say, "you can let them do that if you want to." She knew we wouldn't want to--if we loved them.

We've got it backwards--love says don't restrain, hate says restrain. God puts it the other way: "The Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. . . . If you are left without discipline . . . then you are illegitimate children and not sons" (Hebrews 12:6, 8 RSV). "When we fall under the Lord's judgment, he is disciplining us, to save us from being condemned with the rest of the world" (1 Corinthians 11:32 NEB).'"

I can't say it any better. But it does strengthen my heart when I'm weary of training, of feeling like the "bad guy", the meanie, the kill-joy. But, oh! Does it give my heart the sweetest joy when I observe my children practicing restraint and self-control and even selflessness as a result of the disciplining love of their parents and their Heavenly Father.