2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. 4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 2 Peter 1:2-4 (LSB)
A couple of hours ago I was at a local grocery store picking up a few things. As I walked down the rows approaching the cashiers I kept hearing a strange sound. It sounded like hammering, but softer with a metallic vibration. As I was being checked out by the cashier I heard the noise getting closer and closer to me….
I looked back behind me and saw a cart with a small boy behind it hammering it with a toy of some kind. His mother seemed to be annoyed and kept tying to get him to stop, but he would not do it. I paid for my items and departed. I didn’t have a cart. I was simply carrying my two bags. it was then that I noticed the mother and the small boy ahead of me going out the same door I was. As I exited onto the sidewalk in front of the store before I stepped into the road I heard the mother continually telling the small boy to,”Come back here, right now!” I looked over there and saw him weaving between parked cars. It was a vey scary thing since cars were pulling in and leaving. The mother kept calling for the young boy to stop and come back to her, but he would not do it. Then I saw a car pull in to a spot just in front of where the boy was headed. That was scary, but the boy stopped and his mother caught up with him, parked her grocery cart, pulled him off his feet and I heard some crying as her right hand went up and down on his bottom. This brought back a lot of memories of my own experiences as a young father with two little kids and also, me and my sister as little kids going shopping with our mother. That Bible proverb, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” kept coming up into my mind.” It was as I thought through that as I drove home that as adult Christians, doesn’t God still discipline us? Could my chronic pain in my back, shoulders and hips be part of that?
Repost from September 2021