Growing and Evolving

It's that time of year when many young people are in transition.  They have finished school or college, completed their exams, some already knowing the results and are contemplating the future.  With each year, they have moved on, moved up into the next year at school until now when their formal education is all but finished.  And such is life.  Everything has a season.  Things change and evolve.  We change and evolve.  Our lives are not the same as they were 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago.  Sometimes the change is so gradual we don't even notice it while at other times it is a result of certain decisions we have made.

At the moment in the garden we are enjoying our strawberries.  They started off a few years ago as very small plants.  In the spring we look for the flowers appearing, a sign of what sort of harvest we might enjoy.  The more flowers should produce more fruit.  If the plants did not produce flowers then I would be tempted to dig them up and discard them. They are obviously not going to come to anything, certainly not produce the fruit that we planted them for.   We look for the first signs of those small buds and then for the flowers to open.  But on the other hand it wouldn't be natural for the plants to keep flowering all summer, even if they do look nice and the bees like them.  In creation the buds have to give way to the flower.  Then the flower must die in order to allow the fruit to grow through.


Each stage is necessary and we build on it for the next season.  That doesn't make the original stage wrong, it's just that now we need something more, something different.  A baby begins by drinking milk.  But if an adult consumed only milk, we would know that there was definitely a problem.  Just because the total milk diet was right and proper at the beginning doesn't mean that it must always be so.  An adult needs more than milk to be healthy.  The milk was right for that time but not now.  It reminds me of the words of Paul when he says to the Corinthians, 'I gave you milk not solid food, for you were not ready for it.  Indeed you are still not ready.'


I have on occasions asked why certain things are done in a particular way only to hear the reply, 'Well we've always done it that way'.  Sadly in our church system we find that we can go week after week, do the same things in the same way and nothing changes.  Change seems to be frowned upon.  Many seem stuck in a time warp, not willing to grow and evolve.  I have even heard church leaders saying things like,'We've been here before', and yet they continue to go around in circles coming back to the same thing again and again.  It's as though in our spiritual lives our growth is stunted as we continue to drink the milk and haven't progressed to solid food.  We are happy to just sit passively and be fed.  We just drink what is easily digested instead of taking in real meat to chew on.  On many occasions Jesus said that even though Moses had given them the Law, he was saying something different.  He came to fulfil the Law, in other words to move on from it.  It was right at the time but now they need to have a different way.  It's not natural or right for mature adults to have their parents keep telling them what they can and can't do or organising their lives for them.  They have the maturity to make their own choices. 


We can't go in to the next chapter if we keep on re-reading the last chapter.  The questions I need to ask myself are - am I just going round in circles in my spiritual life? what have I learnt about God that I didn't know or understand before? do I prefer to just sit and be fed or am I willing to seek food for myself? am I still holding on to and reliving past experiences or am I continually moving on? have I grown in the past year?