Discipline!

When in Hawaii, every morning, after my exercise dance routine, I swim for thirty minutes – four laps across the Kuhio Beach lagoon. Salt water has a healing, life-giving effect, so I’m told. And this old, sagging, septuagenarian body needs all of the healing help it can get.

It’s not easy, though. Aging brings with it a plethora of aches, pains and metabolic changes. Exercising hurts more than it used to and takes far greater effort. Added to this, I’ve been stung twice by jellyfish while swimming. And you know the treatment for jellyfish stings, demeaning to say the least.

It’s the result that keeps me going, cleansing and regenerative, body, soul and spirit, born again every morning. This followed by a tall double-shot latte, Starbucks sanctified, makes me ready to take on the world. Like my good friend, Bill Francis says, “It’s heaven on the way to heaven.”

Here’s the rub, though. Caffeine is not everlasting, despite “power drink” testimonials to the contrary – Monster, Red Bull and Full Throttle, to name a few. Heaven and hell coexist together on this planet, each competing for control. It’s an up and down wrestling match with hell coming out on top ever too frequently, forcing you to cry, “Uncle!” The older I get, the more dependent I become upon savior uncle. To say, “It hurts like hell” is not cursing, my spiritually-minded friend; it is reality! The eternal caffeine fix is a promise yet to come.

It takes discipline to coexist in this world, dear ones. “Discipline: reflexive verb to make yourself act or work in a controlled or systematic way. Make: transitive verb to transform somebody or something into something else or to cause somebody to do something or act in a particular way” (Encarta Dictionary).

Back in the dark ages when the use of a leather strap was not called child abuse, my mother’s form of discipline was to let me have it on the behind while saying simultaneously, “This hurts me more than it hurts you!” Yeah, sure! She might as well have been speaking a foreign language. What did she mean? Why was she crying when I was the one literally getting the Hades beaten out of me? It never occurred to me that my undisciplined behavior hurt her more than that hell-cleansing leather strap hurt me.

I had a preacher once say to me, with great braggadocio, “I get up early on Sunday morning to prepare my sermons,” obviously proud of this accomplishment. I had just suffered through one of those sermons, sitting on a hard other-century pew. Made me want to cry, “Uncle!” and exclaim to that preacher, “This is hurting me more than it hurt you!”

Sounds like I’m picking on preachers, doesn’t it? Suffered through a few Sunday School teachers, likewise. Discipline, lack thereof, is no respecter of persons or situations, devotional life first and foremost, I suspect. “Disciple” and “discipline?” They somehow go together, don’t they?

Then Jesus went with them to a garden called Gethsemane…Stay here and keep vigil with me…Going a little ahead, he fell on his face praying…When he came back to his disciples, he found them sound asleep. He said to Peter, ‘Can’t you stick it out with me a single hour? Stay alert…There is part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there’s another part that’s as lazy and an old dog sleeping by the fire. He left them a second time. Again he prayed…When he came back, he again found them sound asleep…went back a third time to pray…When he came back…he said, ‘Are you going to sleep on…? My time is up…Get up!’ (Matthew 26:36-46 Message)

Too bad there were no 7/11 convenience stores in Jerusalem at the time. A caffeine-laden can of Full Throttle would have been a Godsend right about then. Did I really say Godsend?

Come to think about it, who needs all that hard work and discipline anyway. A double-shot latte is worth about thirty minutes in the pulpit, enough to get a pastor through to retirement, thus ensuring that monthly pension check. Besides, on this continent, all you need is a congregation of fifty to place your church in the majority, attendance wise. What more can one ask? I mean, who’s it hurting?

Hmmm. I guess I am picking on preachers… And then he told them, ‘You are to go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere.’ (Mark 16:15 TLB)

Is He talking to me? I’m retired!... GET UP!