Geneva is not yet at the stage where she needs to go to the bathroom to have a meeting with the wooden spoon for each episode of discipline. I’m still able to get a good result by slapping her hand.

But lately, when I use that method, she runs away to Megan, crying for Mommy. I have been feeling bad about this, thinking that maybe I’m too rough on her, and she’s afraid of me. Maybe I don’t give her enough love and play time, and so she only knows me as the bad man that hits her…

But yesterday, I was listening to Schlissel, and he compared this very phenomena with Israel in Exosdus 20, pleading to Moses that God not speak to them again, that they would obey Him, but they would die if He spoke again. They had a fear of God, and it was a good thing. Moses, answering them, said for them not to be afraid, that God was testing them to keep them from sinning.

Then I thought about how when Geneva runs crying to Megan, she is always sent back to me. And she comes back, with her arms in the air, wanting nothing but for her world to come back together, to again be united with me in love and fellowship. She knows that, despite my discipline of her, the safest place she can be is in my arms again, only this time without any rift of sin between us. She knows that she has to come to me openly, wanting to please me.

Parenting, like marriage, teaches you so much about the Christian life, and about God. I am continually awe struck by the amazing ways that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us, to make known His ways to us. Of course, it is primarily through His Word, and everything else must be seen in light of that. But everything else really does teach us about God. And, again, I’m just fascinated that He has created the world so perfectly that us getting married or having kids are pictures of God’s relationship with His people.