Just One Word: Grounded

Grounded

Lora Parsons

The Ashland Beacon

One of my favorite things to talk about from our growing up years is how bad our parents were at grounding my sister and I. It was always our favorite form of punishment for whatever we’d done wrong, because it lasted approximately 1.2 hours before it was revoked. They wouldn’t ground us from church activities, because there was a spiritual implication with those even if it was just a fun event. Those were where you built relationships and strengthened your connection with other like-minded believers. They wouldn’t keep us from our sports events, because there was a team depending on you to do your part, however small that might be. It just wasn’t fair to them. There were no cell phones to take away until my senior year in high school when we got the “state-of-the-art” bag phone complete with an antenna to magnetically attach to the roof of the car through the slightly-cracked driver’s side window. The one thing that could have been fair game in their minds for taking was a Friday night basketball or football game. By that time, we’d gotten back into their good graces for whatever we’d done wrong, not to mention they realized that they also would have then had to miss a game they enjoyed going to. So, by Friday, inevitably, the grounding was over and weekend plans were intact.

  To be sure, there’s a spiritual lesson here in the fact that they showed us grace and mercy by extending to us what we didn’t deserve based on our behavior. They were supreme examples of punishing from a place of love, of being sure we knew that was where any punishment came from, and of illustrating in earthly form the grace that our Heavenly Father showers on His children. When I think about that type of punishment, though, I can never figure out why it’s called what it’s called. Grounded. Maybe it puts one in the “no fly zone” as far as plans? I don’t know. What I do know is that it reminds me of where we are in our Christian faith at every moment of our time here on this earth.

From our arrival, we’ve been grounded. Our life in skin lends itself to mistakes and failures that we were never meant to know. God’s desire from the get-go was for us to live in perfect, eternal harmony with Him. When we messed up that plan, He made a new way for us to eventually get back to that restored relationship with Him. But, for now, we’re grounded…not in the sense of being punished, but in the sense of being earth-bound, stuck on this ground that gravity holds us to each day. We are in a world of imperfection with a God-given divine objective, an appointment that He needs us to keep so He can restore as many as He can back to that intended relationship with Him. Our grounding is divinely purposed. The Scripture espouses the idea that we are IN this world, not OF this world. Our job for as long as this grounding lasts is to share the love of Jesus with as many as we encounter and to be sure that He is known by the way we walk this ground He’s set us upon.

  Thank you, mom and dad, for teaching us the very best things about being grounded…that it’s temporary, purposeful, oozing with love and mercy just like Jesus, and really intended to come to an end that leads us to a Heavenly eternity of being un-grounded. Forever.