The Wisdom of Faith by Bobby Bowden & Steve Bowden

Author:Bobby Bowden & Steve Bowden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Christian Life/Spiritual Growth
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The Wisdom

of Discipline

No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful.

Later on, however, it yields the fruit of peace and righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

(Heb. 12:11)

I didn’t want the whipping I was about to get.

“Lean over the bed,” my father said. His voice was terse. Resistance would only make matters worse. I glanced around and saw the belt slip through the loops around his waist. It was the narrow brown belt he wore to work. I wish it had been a different one. Narrow belts stung. Fortunately for me, he doubled it over to make it more like a strap than a whip—a kindness that others might not recognize. Yet his eyes bored through me. I searched them a second longer. They lacked the mercy I longed for. Hope slipped away. My knees leaned into the edge of the bed in partial submission to his command. Neither of us spoke further. What could I say in self-defense? He had warned me, not once but several times. I had a penchant for bad decisions. Not destructive decisions, mind you. I didn’t start house fires or bully smaller kids in the neighborhood. I was a typical boy of my generation who got into typical mischief—only, on this occasion, what I did was over the top. It didn’t seem so at the time. But it put me on the business end of his brown leather belt. This was going to hurt.

Let me explain. The trouble started on Christmas morning in 1940, when I was eleven. My father knew I wanted a BB gun for Christmas. All the kids had one. I mentioned the subject frequently as the holidays approached. My father showed little interest. But lo and behold, on Christmas morning, what did I find beneath the tree? A double-barrel BB gun! I had never seen one like it. In fact, I might have been the only kid in the neighborhood to have the double-barrel version. He couldn’t have given me a better gift. No doubt my buddies would be jealous.

“You better not shoot anybody,” he sternly admonished. I was aiming the BB gun around the house when he gave me the warning, and he repeated it again for emphasis. I wasn’t listening. I was too busy gazing out the window in search of Nazi storm troopers. There hadn’t been any reports of a Third Reich presence in Birmingham, Alabama, but I kept vigilant watch anyway, at least until my mother served breakfast.

After breakfast, I decided that I needed to go hunting. We lived in a neighborhood of small brick houses. A long row of oaks shaded the sidewalk out front beside the street. In those days every street had a sidewalk on either side, given that most people walked to places like church or the grocery or the doctor’s office, all of which were within a few blocks. If I was going to have any luck hunting, I would need to walk down to the college campus.

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