Hebrews 12:7 –
As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father?
When do we stop getting disciplined like children? I guess it’s when we stop acting like them. I can think of more times in my life where I get “spanked” for something I have done wrong. The biggest “spankings” I seem to get are more for lack of action than something I did wrong. How many times should we have acted and did not? How many times did we miss a major blessing or got in trouble because we procrastinated? I think this is probably the biggest “sin” I do in life; I wait and take no action, then miss an opportunity.
We tend to go through life and not think about missed opportunities because sometimes we don’t know what we missed. But think about all the late fees we have paid for missing a due date on a bill or not being able to do something because we missed a registration date. Today I can think about some major forgot to do’s that have or will cost me. Just this past few weeks I forgot to pay my registration for the van, so time to pay a late fee. I didn’t follow up on my Letters of Recommendations for the application to law school, so the application was late and rejected. I forgot to go into work over the weekend and caused problem in New Zealand, this is developing.
Initially this verse attracted me because of how I have punished you two throughout the years. Even recently, I have punished you for action and I wanted to use this as a “see God agrees” but it quickly fell on my problems. The point I wanted to make was to make sure you understood we punished you out of love and not to be mean. We wanted to form you into well balanced adults who could work in well in society. I hope you take that away from this verse. What I want you to learn from my experiences is don’t procrastinate or you will miss a bunch!