Thursday, September 15, 2005

Good Discussion! I am Learning

I have been having a good discussion lately with Travis Stanley concerning race issues. You can get to his blog at www.travisstanley.net. He has some good things to say and I am learning to be more passionate, but at this point, I think I am learning to ask good questions. That is really what I want to gain right now from blogging. Asking good questions, thought provoking questions that cause me to think and wonder and search out my own heart.

I want to be more compassionate for the poor and I hope to gain that as well as more knowledge on what God wants from me.

Have a great day!

Monday, September 12, 2005

Tollie and I are teaching a class on Sunday morning on Parenting. We only have a few people in our class. I was hoping for more in the class. Today was a good class. We talked about discipline and asked the members of the class to do some observing this next week and look for examples of what they think is good parenting and bad parenting. They are to be prepared next week to share what they observed.

We gave our examples today of bad parenting. Tollie had seen a woman at Mazzio's Pizza. She had the boy pinned down next to the building and slapped him across the face.

I had an example of a mother who tried to corral her 3 to 4 year old daughter and then out of the blue grab the child by the arm and start whooping her. Needless to say the child was surprised by the whooping and it was obvious the mother was either frustrated or angry or maybe even embarressed by the child's action and took out that feeling on the child.

We talked today about the fact that most, at least a lot of parents just go into parenting expecting to know how to parent without giving any thought or getting any instruction on how to parent. We looked at Hannah versus Eli on parenting in I Samuel. Hannah taught Samuel early on and when Eli had the boy and God called Samuel, he immediately obeyed the call. On the other hand, Eli scolded his sons and they were sinful and immoral. Eli waited too long to try to reign in his sons and it was too late.

Next week we will continue to talk about discipline and how that discipline involves training, instruction and molded the child.