Thursday, March 15, 2012

Grow up

I talked about this a little last week, but growing up isn’t easy.  Maybe I’m the only one, but I used to grow tired of having people say things to me like, “Oh, grow up would you?” and then go on to say, “You’re not old enough to do that yet.”  So, which is it?

When Gordon Dalbey was here, he also reminded me of a couple phrases that I heard growing up — “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” and “Big boys don’t cry.” So will you make me cry, or should I stop on my own?  Just asking!

Some of this falls on us as well.  We either want what we can’t have, or we are longing to do things that “older” people can do.  I hated being sent to my room so the “big” people could have their time.  I remember sneaking out of my bedroom, sitting at the top of the stairs so I could hear what was so important.  I was never impressed.  Growing up isn’t easy.

Growing up as a child and teenager has some similarities to my faith journey.  What I’ve come to discover is that some growth we have no control over.

I would have loved to have been another six inches taller or another 30 pounds heavier in high school.  My high school coaches would have appreciated that as well.  But I had very little, if any, control over how tall I was going to be, or the bulk of my frame.  The sports I could participate in were limited by my 6 foot, 130 pound frame (yep, you read right).  I wouldn’t be the tight end for our high school football team.  Neither would I be the dominant center on our basketball team.  Don’t think I need to explain either.  
         
Along with that, there were some choices I could make, like managing the football team instead of being the next Charlie Sanders (gotta be an old Lions fan, sorry).  Or doing radio broadcasts for our basketball team when I wasn’t tall enough, er, good enough to play.  Some things we can control, while others, we can’t.
             
There is much we can do for our own faith development.  What we do, we do with diligence, on purpose, and with intention.  The rest is God’s work.  Forming practices that tend to this work God is doing in us is more like a dance than a math equation.  We live between the tension of grace on the one hand and law on the other, at times dancing back and forth between the two.  This “dance” is ours.  It’s our coming to the realization that we have a role to play in our faith development, that what we do matters, and what God does, we can’t.

So, like Eugene Peterson has been reminding us for a couple of weeks now in his paraphrase of Matthew 5:48:  “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up.  You’re kingdom subjects.  Now act like it.  Live out your God-created identity.”  I’ve said this before; let’s practice well, so with God’s help, we can live well.

No comments:

Post a Comment