Ramblings From Retirement - Spare the Rod?
Ramblings From Retirement - Spare the Rod? By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 8, 2021 Mother’s Day is tomorrow and I’ve been writing a few remembrances about my mother. She stood at a mighty 5 foot 2 inches but she was full of life and none of us children crossed her. She could get a terror on in nothing flat and was not afraid to spare the rod. In fact I have planted lilacs in our backyard in remembrance of her because she loved them a lot, however they were also her favorite tool for “whippin’s”. More than once I heard from her say, “Here’s a sharp knife, now go out to the lilac bush and cut me off a sucker so I can whip you.” Now lest you think that she was being abusive, she was not. A few whacks was all it took to get us into a proper frame of mind. None of us suffered from her ministrations and in fact all of us learned respect and discipline from her. She would remind us that to “spare the rod is to spoil the child” which of course is not found in the Bible but we learn from Prover...