Discipline

Recently I watched one of my daughters as she attempted to discipline her son, who is three years old. Sam is a happy go lucky child that I have labeled as the "Rapper". This is because always saying things in a language all his own. It solds like rap, and by the look on his face I can only imagine that he has the whole lyrical verse in his head. Anyway, Sam is a runner. He runs from his mother and everyone else.To him it is all a game as his mother constantly runs after him. Never spanking him or scolding him so that he learns that this behavior is unacceptable, and if nothing else dangerous.

As a kid I remember being disciplined alot. I rremember hearing my mother say "this hurts me more that it hurts you" as she whooped my butt. I really couldn't figure out how that could be at time, but now I think I do. Discipline as a noun means "training intended to produce a specified character or pattern of behavior" and also "punishment intended to correct or train". It hurt my mother to punish me, but she knew she had to train me. Most young children left without this training will normally do the wrong things. A young child will normally take whatever they want. It doesn't  care who it belongs it to, how valuable is, or if it may be harmful. They just know they want it. Those who love their children care enough to discipline them.

Now what I have heard alot of from young parents today is that "they don't want their children to go through what they went through." To this I answer, "some things are meant to go through." If you don't experience the consequences of making wrong choices, you will continue  to make them. One must have discipline to succeed in life. If children do not learn to listen to their parents correct them, and neglect their instruction they will never fully learn to respect any kind of authority. This is clearly evident in the conditions of our schools where teachers find it hard to be respected and listened to by their students. Proverbs 19:18 says "Discipline your children while there is hope, otherwise you will ruin their lives".

Discipline is doing what you don't want to do in order to do what you want to do. We all need it, young and old. Discipline is learning not to run from your mother in the mall like you want, so that you can go swimming at the pool later. Discipline is not eating that chocolate dessert that you really want , because you want to go out and show off your new figure at the party. Discipline is not buying that stylish new car you want, so you can remodel the kitchen. Even our government needs discipline particularly with our finances. Discipline would have been not giving everybody a mortgage they couldn't afford so they could be home owners, so we could have lower unemployment and closer to a balanced budget today.

Feed the Children

I can remember what my mother used to say to me and my brothers when we wouldn't eat some of the great food she cooked for us like liver, black eyed peas, or spinach. "That's good food, eat it, there are children starving in Africa and they would love to have that food." One of the worst head slaps I received was the one and only time that I said "give it to them then."

The morale of the story though is that we live in the richest country in the world ,and I should have been grateful for whatever meals I received. This hit me hard last night as I watched the evening news and saw the starving and dying children in Somalia. I actually felt ashamed for the huge lunch that I had that day now knowing that others were starving in such staggering numbers. It is only by the grace of God that I was born here in America and not there.

 It also angered me to see the news media there now, when more than 40,000 children would die from starvation and a refugee camp the size of Cleveland in the dessert, without food, water, shelter and with little hope. Where were they when the drought was occurring for over two years, and the civil war has been raging for a decade, and thousands of lives have been lost? While America has fought and spent billions of dollars on the war in Iraq, based on a false premise and ego, it has turned a blind eye on this type of suffering. Were these people's rights less violated here than there? Or was it because there is nothing to be gained in the form of oil, minerals, or leverage. And last but not lease is it because these are people of color? Does our country's moral compass  not extend to Africa as it does the Middle East ?

So the media will now try to bring attention to this desperate situation, in the hopes that ordinary people or any civilian organization with financial means will help. Even the poorest of us is better off that these forgotten people, mostly women and children, and no matter how bad it gets I will never forget that.