Praise poetry

A young man half my age came out for a visit the other day because he wanted to seek my counsel on a variety of issues. As he was getting ready to leave he asked me one last question, “How do you know how to run a business? I responded, “Common sense”.

He laughed, but I reiterated that most decisions that I make in business are simply common sense decisions. I then added that my “common sense” comes from my Bible training.

I didn’t receive formal business training or attend Wharton Business School or a similar entity. I have however read the Bible completely through so many times that I don’t even remember how many, and I study it daily. Among my favorite books for sage advice on business and a variety of subjects are Proverbs and Ecclesiastes written by King Solomon, son of King David. The Bible states that he was the wisest and wealthiest man who ever lived or ever will live on this earth. People traveled from all over the world to seek his guidance and learn from King Solomon including even the Queen of Sheba.

We don’t have to be royalty or take a ship half way around the world to sit at the knee of Solomon to take advantage of his vast lore of knowledge and wisdom; we can just pick up a Bible and drink it in whenever we desire.

A friend wrote to me yesterday:

“Something that really stuck with me in “Miracle on Luckie Street” is throughout the book, you talk about how people (including your parents) repeatedly asked you “what is wrong with you” and called you a “bad seed.” As tough as it was to battle through your addictions, I thought it amazing how self-confident you remained and, some might observe, still are today, against such steady negative reinforcement. If it was a bad seed, then it was apparently well fertilized. (Hmmm I would say I was well nurtured indeed with God’s love and grace through his holy word and that should give confidence to any thinking person.)

My good friend went on to describe his feelings about a letter he gave his young daughter when she recently won a regional speaking contest. He wrote: “Teen-agers are strange animals, and the balance between praise and parental redirection is a challenging one. Still, if Jesus were ever a parent, I tend to believe that he would have focused more on the former than the latter”.

Then he copied me on the letter that he wrote to his daughter right after she won the competition:

“My Dearest Savannah,

Today you are a winner a champion.

But even before the announcement that you had earned the top honors for the regional “Poetry Out Loud” competition, your mother and I knew the verdict: You are the best.

Be as proud of yourself as we are of you.

God has blessed you with amazing talent, spirit and potential. Never take that for granted.

Know that He is watching to see how well you put your gifts into play. He undoubtedly is smiling as widely as we are today.

Open those big blue eyes widely, and let in the vision of how different you are how special you are let them warm you, encourage you, challenge you.

It is all there for you, my wonderful daughter. You will be as great as you choose to be.

I am so proud of you, and I love you more than my words here could ever hope to express.

Daddy


He finished his letter to me with this thought: “Today’s parents sometimes take criticism for showering their children with too much rave and not enough rod, and maybe we do. But today, at least, there is one young lady who knows how much she is loved confident that she can do anything she sets her mind to”.


As I think about this letter one thing sticks out in my mind, namely that Jesus is a parent and indeed as loving a parent as we will ever find. He always has our best interests at heart and desires only the absolute best for each and every one of us in this life and forever.

I know from my Bible study that Jesus focuses on love and yet I also know that discipline is part of His love for us. One reason people kept asking me “what was wrong with me” was because I was not winning poetry speaking contests; I was a juvenile delinquent and later a criminal. Perhaps if I had received some letters like the one above I would have gone another route, but I didn’t and it was what it was.

In order to overcome my rebellion against God and man it became necessary for me to feel the stripes from the rod of God’s “loving” discipline on my back more times than I care to relate or remember. I was not chastened because God enjoyed seeing me suffer, but because as my good and wonderful divine Parent, He loved me with all of His heart and He knew that I needed to be disciplined or I would die both physically and spiritually.

My old pal King Solomon pointed out that discipline is sometimes needed, particularly in children. In fact no less than 13 times in Proverbs he repeated it. We know from our Bible study that no matter how sweet and innocent they may appear, children are not born without sin and must be trained up in the Lord and discipline is sometimes necessary as he points out with verses like:

Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Hell. My son, if your heart is wise, my heart too will be glad; Discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death”.

Yikes, “Putting him to death”???? Receive discipline or die! As I said above I can assure you that is what would have happened to me and then I would have received a one way ticket to the deepest place in hell.

It’s real!

I feel that second to achieving salvation and then finding my wife of forty years, my greatest accomplishment in life has been raising my children to be fine upstanding young men. First and foremost they are Christians and so are their families. They love the Lord with all of their hearts, they love their wives, and they love their children. To a son they are college educated and highly successful. They have the respect of their peers and enjoy many friends who love them.

This is no accident. My wife and I raised them up bathing them in a love that knows no bounds, (similar to that expressed by my buddy for his daughter), but on those few times it was necessary I can assure you that they tasted the rod of correction on their butts and were disciplined.


The Bible states that facing discipline is a consequence and so therefore in the end it’s really up to us isn’t it?


Make no mistake about it my brothers and sisters, God loves us so much He is willing to punish us when we need it. But as with any good parent those incidents should be few and far between. Most of the time He showers us with blessings innumerable.

Go out and commit adultery today and see how God will react to it, but don’t expect a nice letter from Him praising you. More likely you will reap what you sow in the form of a divorce from an angry and hurt husband/wife who finds out about it, a venereal disease, or maybe even a bullet in the head from the husband/wife of the gal/guy you wooed, or all of the above.

Or you can behave yourself and enjoy all of the blessings God can heap upon your happy and blissful marriage. The choice is ours.

Common sense


Eph 6:1
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.