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The slow devolution of fatherhood in our popular media has surely had some effect on the viewers' understanding of the family in general and fatherhood in particular. Another fearful effect can be seen in the area of biblical interpretation. The Bible uses the image of the father consistently to reveal various aspects of the relationship between God and his people. As the popular image of fatherhood continues to devolve, certain characteristics of God will become less meaningful and even unintelligible to our children and grandchildren. The ability to comprehend and appreciate the biblical presentation of God as our Heavenly Father will become distorted or even lost completely. The passage we come to in our on-going study of Hebrews offers one such potential difficulty. The verses below speak of divine parental discipline - the biblical teaching that God chastises and trains his children by means of difficulties and hardships of life. This teaching is not popular or even desirous to hear among many. However, when the difficult times come in our lives, such words serves as a source of great encouragement as they help us to understand why things happen the way that they do. Just like us, the original readers were prone to thinking incorrectly about the troubles they were experiencing. To give encouragement and to motivate his readers to endure the difficulties of life, the author instructs them to persevere and hold fast to their faith.