From very early in her new life, her legs have been yearning and churning to move! Try to change her diaper if you don't believe me. If you're not careful, those flailing feet can do some damage!!
She wants to move. As she grows and matures, she has moved from reclined kicking, to creeping and crawling, to the much anticipated wobbly walking.
I love to watch how focused she is as she goes from a stationary sit to a straddled stand. Do you know what I'm talking about? She plants her feet so that she has a wide base. Then she slowly reaches out with her arms as she strives for steadiness. Then slowly and deliberately she engages her leg muscles as she begins to stand upright.TA DA!
But she is not satisfied with merely standing still. She wants to move! She has places to go and things to explore.
It occurred to me that whether we are talking about physically walking or spiritually walking, we all want/should/need to move forward. Physically speaking, when someone cannot walk, it is recognized as a handicap and special provisions are made. Spiritually speaking, as long as we are alive God expects us to grow, mature, and move forward. If we are not walking and moving forward in our spiritual maturity, what is blocking our growth?
To help us with this one, let's take this spiritual/physical thing a step further.
In the church culture, we talk about being reborn. Therefore, at the beginning of our walk as a born-again believer, we are mere infants. We need someone to bottlefeed us, so to speak.
Unfortunately, this is where some believers are satisfied to stop and, even more unfortunate, some churches are satisfied with leaving their newest additions.
Think about that--parents who are willing to bring new infants into existence, but don't want to help the newbies grow up. "I just want more babies!"
Why would anyone want to do that?!
Well, let's admit it. Babies are cute. Plus, those who have helped babies grow into adults know that babies are demanding, but sometimes changing a messy diaper is an easier and less painful parenting task than watching a maturing child make messy mistakes.
Helping an offspring mature requires time, energy, and financial resources. It takes more energy to practise walking with a toddler or to chase after a careening bicycle than it does to corral the kid in a crib. An education is expensive. And let's face it walking, pedaling, and learning take a lot of time for both the student and the teacher.
The same can be said of spiritual babies.
In order to properly care for spiritual babies, there need to be spiritual parents to help them grow during the different levels of maturity. We don't leave the birthing room expecting our physical offspring to walk, and we shouldn't expect our spiritual babes to come out of the baptismal ready to hit the road running.
Yet helping the new believer mature may require more time, energy, and financial resources than some want to invest.
Continuing with my analogy, the natural progression is for physical children to progress from fully dependant to fully independant individuals over the course of time. Personally, I don't want my children to be infants forever. Although I was happy to provide feeding and diaper changing services to them as newborns, I am glad I don't have to provide those same services for my adult children.
Which brings me back to the issue of balance.
Just as a society needs procreation to continue, a church needs both infants and adults to be healthy and growing. Only mature oldies? The church ceases to exist as its numbers naturally decrease as they become deceased. Only aged immatures? Many monster messes with no one to clean them up!
If your church invests in growth, get involved. And don't just learn for learning's sake. Use what you learn, for goodness sake! Grow up and then invest in the youngsters around you. And then help them grow so that they can help others grow. (Don't even get me started on the joys of being a grandparent!!!)
If your church doesn't offer opportunities to grow...maybe it's time to make a change.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. Ephesians 4:14-15
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