Growth

Luke 2:52
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
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  Jesus grew, in maturity and wisdom.

  It is so easy to forget this.

  But it is essential to a life of faith.

  See, I often get caught up in the (wrong) idea that Jesus was born as a completely developed font of wisdom, that as a newborn he was busy spouting nuggets of wisdom and pearls of spiritual impact that left Mary and Joseph stunned at the child they had just delivered.  (and yes, it takes two people to deliver a baby.  Did Rachel do the hardest job?  Yup.  But I played a pretty big role, too.  She'll agree with that.)  Jesus wasn't busy  describing the spiritual state of the Pharisees as a newborn--he was busy crying.

  Because that's what babies do.  They cry.  Then, when they're finished crying, they rest so they can cry more. Then they eat, because no one likes to cry on an empty stomach.

  Because Jesus was fully God, I have this image of him in the manger as a completely developed and wise baby.  But I forget that he was fully human--that it took him months before he could hold his head upright, that it took him a year before he could walk, that his first words didn't occur to him at six weeks, but rather years later.  I forget that Jesus wasn't busy composing the Sermon on the Mount at the age of four, but rather was busy trying to figure out how to be a four year old.

  Jesus grew and matured.

  I do, too.  I'm not supposed to have it all figured out.  I'm suppose to be working on some things, focusing on my growing edges (and there are many), so that I might move through this particular growth field and into another, but I'm always going to be growing and maturing.  Faith takes place over a lifetime, and the Holy Spirit builds one layer at a time--he doesn't finish the whole thing and then give me thirty years to sit back and admire it from my bathtub on the edge of the cliff that they always show in those commercials--no, the Holy Spirit works with and in me every single day, and then uses that day to build toward the next, and this process continues throughout my life.  I am growing in faith--and while I hope to be growing in different areas and in new ways many years from now, I don't want to stop growing.

  So I need to give myself some patience, and recognize that I'm not going to get everything right, that I'm not going to have all the answers--but rather that I'm called to be moving in a faithful direction, working as hard as I can while the Holy Spirit works within me, in the hopes that I might see the next faithful direction, the next step in my growth, so that I, too, might increase in wisdom and years.