Discipline or Punishment
May 13, 2026
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from
This month (May 2026) I complete my seventy-seventh year and a few more than fifty years following Jesus. Not all of those have been glorious as I dragged plenty of baggage from my old life. At this late stage, there is much I desire to leave far behind, to put out of memory but letting the old man pass away isn’t as certain as leaving my old body behind for what Jesus has prepared for my next. No, I am healthy enough but my threescore years and ten are in the rear-view mirror and growing faint.
I find among my senior friends and within myself a tendency to remember fondly parts of the past that would be better forgotten, those pleasures of activities that are now less participatory and more reminiscences. One of the issues we have is the faultiness of glorifying what really wasn’t as wonderful as we idealize with age. We weren’t quite as productive, quite as rugged, quite as deliberate, quite as accomplished as our memories think we were. Yes, there are those special moments but they are past and seldom can or should be recaptured. What we did then was segue to what we are equipped to accomplish now. One of the common traits of those of us in our latter years is that we are no longer able to compete with our former selves. We are not who we were. Seventy-five is not the new fifty except that we have better healthcare, greater opportunities, more prosperity and more information than twenty-five years ago.
With the last 25 years came the abundance of internet access for information and dis-information; separating news from opinion has been confused by the multiplicity of sources all presenting themselves as Truth and demanding our agreement with what is unsubstantiated yet popular. The ease of communication enabled by the smartphone is only twenty years old and yet has become so ingrained globally that culture has been unable to grow appropriate mores to keep it valuable without misuse. Life has become instant without a long vision of values, responsibilities and consequences. Social media tends to be ‘now’ driven and not have a long historical context. Truth is judged by what is popular for social influencers and not by individual moral values. This moment becomes of paramount importance and must be gratifying to our feelings.
While God acknowledges the past, is fully aware of all that has passed, it is just that: Past. He does not dwell in the past, nor live in the world of ‘what if’ or ‘might have been.’ While the Lᴏʀᴅ ‘changes not’ He is creative and responsive in His expression into the present.
In the first verse, ‘I the Lᴏʀᴅ do not change’ is the reason given that the Israelites are not destroyed which is alluded to in Jeremiah’s Lamentation 3:23,
God’s character and values do not change no matter what He experiences. We tend to be reactive but He is responsive, continuing to work toward fulfillment of His eternal desires. His past accomplishments are held more loosely than ours—He is not anchored in the past but continues on in accomplishing His design.
God is forward progressing, accomplishing what He is allowed to do in our lives and then moving on in His ongoing pattern of redemption. While we anchor ourselves in our pasts, He has a wider perspective than we:
What we see as permanence has the essence of our own shadow, it is fleeting, ephemeral, passing away as quickly as the shadow to the waning day. God is not so:
The Lᴏʀᴅ has not just been creative ‘in the Beginning’ but continues to do new things, things that are ‘new’ in our perception but which He has designed from the foundations of all that is. It does not yet appear to us created beings all that God has in mind for expression of His creativity. What is past is preliminary and preparatory to what is coming. Jesus revealed to the Apostle John in his Patmos vision just how radical the future is from the past:
It is inconceivable to the human mind what God has yet to accomplish. Our limitation to what is familiar means we have a propensity for dragging the past into not only the present but also our conception of the eternal future. Our main challenge is seeing God as able to redeem us and create something ‘new’ out of our past so that we can be part of His present and future. The division between what we were—Past—and what we are to become—Present / Future—rests upon allowing Him to change our orientation from the world toward Himself,
Allowing the old man to pass away goes beyond physical death but is fundamental to putting off the old man to make way, putting on the new in the image of Christ Jesus.
The same composer of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Apostle John, in one of his last letters wrote reminding believers in Jesus that what God was continuing to do was neither Old or New Testament but the continuing command of God to live in Him as changlings, letting the darkness of our past, pass away and to let the true Light shine through our present lives,
Yes, the old man is passing away but the Lᴏʀᴅ has a vision of the new man created in the image of Jesus. We can leave the past behind and walk in His newness of life if we allow Him to do His creative work in us.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from
You have wearied the Lᴏʀᴅ with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who
“…and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and
“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be
But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able