Consequences and Reconciliation

I was surfing the ‘net and came across an old story about how a teacher found a novel way to make students pay for their transgressions. The teacher, Bruce Janu, had students who ended up getting in trouble in school at Riverside-Brookfield High outside of Chicago stay after school in the Frank Sinatra Detention Club. There, for 30 minutes, they must sit utterly still--no talking, no homework, no snoozing - and listen to “Ol'Blue Eyes” croon songs from a by-gone era.

"The kids hate it. They're miserable," reports Mr Janu, a Sinatra fan who devised the club as a way to make detention more fun for him and less so for the students.

"It just got to where I couldn't stand it," said one senior. "It was SO BORING."

Janu isn't totally heartless though. He lets students sing along if they want - but nobody does.

It is important for people to learn that choices have consequences. In terms of their later success, it is one of the most important lessons that they will learn. Adults who are continually bailing their children out when they make mistakes are cheating their children out of one of life's most important lessons: we reap what we sow. Someone has put it this way. There are two major pains in life: the pain of discipline and the pain of regret.

And God is always ready to offer us reconciliation.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5.18)