So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books. 2 Peter 1:5-9.
In reading scripture this morning, I am reminded that growth and development are the healthy and expected order of things. And that health itself is ordered; their is a design that God has for the development of all creatures from birth to death. Just before the scripture shared above, Peter speaks of escaping the grip of the mind of the world which is based on lust, ultimately "getting what I want". I think God would much rather us get what we need. There's no doubt that God wants us to be happy, but being happy because we get what we want is an immature station in the world. My daughter is like that. Her happiness depends on getting just what fits within her fancy. And it is our job, miserable though I am at it (her mother is much better with instruction), to help her understand that the world is bigger than her.
There is something very charming about a young person learning this lesson, however. Their reality is developing. My daughter truly doesn't understand a context bigger than herself. Once she does, she can be held responsible for it. But right now, reality is opening up before her eyes. And as such, she will fathom more and more what her unique position in the world is.
I started this post thinking of Celebration of Discipline. Peter puts ordered development in such a way that it is compelling, something worth being celebrated. In many ways, I feel I am the same, if not less than I was 20 years ago. These things ought not to be. I know that I have grown, but my tit-for-tat nature, I cannot seem to shake it. Yet, perhaps, it's coming into focus what is inside me and I can make sure that the principles of truth guide me to not have that ugliness show up on the outside. Yet, I pray for a better way. I pray to be changed on the inside. Invariably, it is what is within that shows up on the out.
Heavenly Father, therefore, I pray that love is my guiding principle. And more than that, that Love would lead me back to You. And that the great and exceedingly precious promises would be dear to me, and near to me, as You.
In Jesus Name,
Amen
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