A Little Discipline Goes a Long Way

The Latin word from whence we get “dis­ci­pline”, lit­er­al­ly means “instruc­tion, knowl­edge.” So the lack, then, of dis­ci­pline, must imply a lack of knowl­edge. This comes as a hard blow to some­one like myself, who tends to think of a vice, such as pro­cras­ti­na­tion, a mere employ­ee to be tak­en in hand. I con­fess I have a zeal­ous dis­re­gard for rou­tine and sched­ul­ing. Mind you, I do not arrive late for appoint­ments or church. No, my dis­re­gard is out of a nag­ging fear that if I suc­cumb to the day-plan­ner, the bul­let jour­nal or the desk cal­en­dar, then I have been “entan­gled again with the yoke of bondage”.

This fear has not served me well. It’s the clas­sic bat­tle of the legal­ist flee­ing from any detec­tion of lib­er­al­ism, and vice ver­sa. As our school year begins anew, and I find myself strug­gling to jus­ti­fy com­mit­ting my sched­ule for four stu­dents, bak­ing bread, plan­ning our meals, clean­ing the house, orches­trat­ing chores, and choos­ing the hymns for Sun­day ser­vices, to mem­o­ry, I am drawn to the sim­ple wis­dom of Mr. Raven­hill: “We must once again wear the har­ness of dis­ci­pline. There is no oth­er way.”

May God bless your school year, and may next month see me writ­ing my blog more than three hours before the deadline;)