A week or two ago, as I was putting Mason to bed, we were talking about why it is important for him to eat good, healthy food. I explained that it helps him grow big and strong. He replied, “But when I eat something I don’t grow bigger!” I had to explain to him that growth is slow, and sometimes we have to look back over a year or two to be able to see any difference. I asked him if he remembered seeing his baby pictures, explained that was just a couple years ago, and told him to look at how much he had grown. I explained he had been growing big and strong all along, and that while you can’t see a difference from one day to the next, over time it makes a big difference.
As I finished this biology lesson with my almost-four year old, I felt God tugging a little on my heart as if maybe the lesson was for me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am a bit impatient. I think this is probably a flaw of our generation, but when I am dissatisfied with something (case in point here: my spiritual life) I want it fixed, and I want it done now. Everybody likes a good conversion story. Paul’s encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus is bold, dramatic, and immediate. But we just as often see characters in scripture whose journey was more gradual, more messy, more like mine, honestly.
All throughout the Gospels Peter comes across as a bumbling Clark Griswold sort of guy – lovable but a bit clueless. But by the time he wrote 1 and 2 Peter several decades after Christs’ death and resurrection, it’s obvious a great change had been made in the quantity and quality of his faith. Even in the Psalms of King David, when read chronologically, we can see his inch-by-inch transformation from arrogant, self-gratifying, and disobedient to a humble, gracious old man.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote the following:
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
— that is to say, grace —
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.Amen.
Given that Jesus frequently used parables related to agriculture, referring to himself as the Vine and of the Father as the Gardener, I think it wise we remember that growth does not, and should not, happen with immediacy. For infants – yes. This is true both physical and spiritually. But the more mature we become, often the more slowly growth – on average – occurs. If I look back at last week, or even last month, and cannot see change, I will not be discouraged this year. If I look back over the last two, five or ten years and do not see growth, then I think we should all be concerned.
Could we be doing “more” (whatever that means for you)? Absolutely. Should we strive to follow Christ to the best of our abilities? Of course. As we start this journey together again in 2011, let’s agree to encourage one another in our journey. Hold one another accountable. Pick up the spiritual disciplines we all know are the key to slow growth that we all desire. And remember to:
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.
Well said.