I was thinking about my father’s lawn the other day. He’s in what appears to be an eternal struggle with it. Every year toward the end of the summer he rips up all the grass and puts down new seeds. Then, when the following summer comes, he’s careful to nurture the sprouting grass.

This usually works for at least several weeks. His lawn will look fantastic. Then, some weeds and crabgrass will begin to creep in. That’s about the time that he breaks out the weed killer. But at this point, it’s usually more or less over for the summer. Although a lot of the weeds will retreat, the lawn seems to be out of energy. It’s only a matter of time before very large patches seem to stop growing and sooner or later give way to pale green that eventually turns brown.

Of course, at this point it’s just a waiting game until the whole thing gets ripped up again and he resolves that “next year will be the year”.

I’m not a home owner with a big piece of green grass to take care of. Maybe if I was I’d understand a bit more easily. But regardless, you’ve got to admire his resolve to keep at it.

But it’s the fickle behavior of the lawn that had me thinking about the nature of sin and discipline. My father wants a rich green lawn. Which, if he wants, he’s going to have to put his sweat into. But the weeds take no work at all. In fact, they’re entirely uninvited. Yet, without any effort whatsoever, they come in and thrive.

Isn’t this just like life? The bad things in life come easily. Sin takes nothing to achieve. Without any attention, it will excel and increase. While on the flip side, the truly good never comes easily. Our virtues and disciplines will only come if we work for them. If we seek them.

And, like my father’s lawn the bad spoils the good. It wouldn’t be enough to have rich green grass, if all throughout there were dandelions and weeds. In the same way, we can’t just seek the good, we have to reject the bad.

Interestingly enough, like my father’s lawn, it’s going to be an uphill battle that’s not going to get easier in this life time. I suppose we just trust that it’s worth the effort.

In small group tonight, we studied 1 Peter 1:13-25. In the midst of the verse, an awkward segment arises:

“If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth… “

In isolation, it sounds like Peter is saying that we should be careful to do what’s right because if we don’t we’re getting the boot. That’s not what he’s saying, but it took us some time to get our heads outside of our works-based thinking.

What Peter is saying is that God rebukes his children. He’s reminding these Christians that they call on him as Father, and their father sees their actions, choices and conditions of heart and, like a father, he will deliver a stern rebuke. Little children fear the rebuke of their earthly father, although it is delivered in love. It is very much the same with God’s fatherhood over us.

The author of Hebrews expands on this idea in Hebrews 12:7-8:

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”

On one hand we see that God only chastises the ones he loves. On the other hand, we should use the prospect of that chastisement to help keep our hearts in line.

This stands, I think, as a fresh shot of spiritual reality. God will rebuke me for my sin and it will be unpleasant. But, he will do it in love for my benefit.

This week’s scripture meditation came from Luke 12:32. I came across it not as I was reading the bible (that probably won’t be until around June), but while I was finishing up John Piper’s The Pleasures of God. The verse goes like this:

“Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

This verse is steeped in the kind of encouragement a soul needs to keep moving in the midst of difficulty and sin.

Most probably won’t be familiar with this verse from the get go–I know I wasn’t. When you read it in the Gospel narrative, it comes across as something of a footnote. But that couldn’t possibly be farther from the truth. Consider the verses leading up to this one.

Luke 12:22-31 are the verses from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus’ tells his listeners, “Consider the lilies!“. They’re the verses where he reminds them not to worry about what they’re going to eat, or drink or wear, because God is going to take care of them. But all of these things in verses 22-31 are temporal blessings, it isn’t until verse 32 that Jesus brings out the promises of everlasting value.

It’s in verse 32 that Jesus hits the pinnacle of his beautiful string of thought. He, in essence says, “Yes, you will be provided for here–but, do not fear your eternal well being, because it brings your Father great joy to bless you eternally with life!”

If you have ever felt like your blessings in Christ are a kind of begrudging gift from the Father, this verse will calm your fears. It’s easy to get stuck thinking of Christ as the compassionate one and the Father as the vengeful task master. In that line of thinking, our justification because of Christ begins to look like a loophole we’ve exploited. Like, God is paying out salvation, but only because we caught him in a technicality–if he had it his way, we’d all burn.

This verse assures us of the opposite. Salvation, from beginning to end, is the pleasure, not only of Jesus, but of the Father as well.

If that’s not good news to a weary and heavy laden soul, I don’t know what is!

So, here’s a little bit of back story.

My folks have never been on the hard edge of technology. That’s not a shot at them, they’re just not early adopters. So, growing up we weren’t a family with camcorders and stuff. But regardless of that, my folks still did a good job of capturing some of the animation of me and my sister’s childhood.

One of those techniques was to take a little Radio Shack tape recorder and microphone and record us talking to each other, or talking to them. There are dozens of tapes in my father’s stash with little clips of our weird adolescent voices. Currently, he’s going through and digitizing all those tapes for easier reference.

Tonight, he dropped one such file on my desk and I couldn’t help but share.

This is about four minutes of a conversation from 1988 between me and my father about various things. Let me tell you though, for a three year old, I say “microphone” quite well.

Click here to listen!