lent 22 - miracle of growth

I work doing music classes with babies and pre-school children and yesterday I spent time with small people from the ages of 6 months to 4.  I never cease to be amazed at what happens to people between the moment of conception and the age of 4 or 5.   In my classes yesterday I saw babies who couldnt sit up, bear their own weight, hold things easily, focus on things for more than a few seconds, talk or make themselves understood.  I saw children who were just learning to crawl and others who were just learning to stand.  Then there was the class who were walking but not talking, able to copy some actions but still heavily dependent on adults.  The next class up saw a massive jump in understanding and participation as kids now able to talk start to make themselves understood and interact with adults and other children.  At this age they can follow instructions and copy adults, they remember things from the previous week and want to tell you stories about what they have been doing.  They have a sense of humour and find things funny.  They have rhythm and love to dance and move about. 
The oldest children in the pre-school age group I teach are pretty much fully formed people with personality and distinct characters.  You can tell the quiet ones from the rowdy ones, the shy ones from the confident ones, the really musical ones from the averagely musical.  They are interested in other people and ask questions about things other than themselves.  They can listen to a story, anticipate what is going to happen next, remember what happened before and learn songs and rhymes.

You were like that once.   It's a miracle isnt it?  Human development.  That awesome and amazing explosion of growth which takes place in those first few years and which takes us from being utterly dependent for absolutely everything on a parent, to being relatively independent within a few years.

Over the course of a couple of years we learn to crawl, stand, walk, talk, reason, interact. Never again in our lives will we learn so much and change so spectacularly in such a short space of time.

Jesus tells us that we must be born again.  And quite often I think we look on the ' born again' thing as being the end goal for people.  They ( We)  need a clean slate, to start again free from sin, spiritually alive.  We all know that.  We have known it forever.   And then we talk about discipleship - and we look to that group of grown men Jesus gathered round him and we listen to what Jesus taught them and recognise that following Jesus involves being ' grown up'.   But what if we have missed something in between.   What if we have missed allowing and encouraging people to be spiritual babies and toddlers and children?   In the natural world babies need parents - they cant do anything at all for themselves.  In the Kingdom I think its the same.  Baby Christians need a LOT of support.  They need help, care, protection.  They need to be fed.  They need people to clear up their mess and get them into routines and constantly lovingly interact with them to facilitate their development.  We know what happens to babies who are left alone, not stimulated, not fed, not cared for.  They dont grow.  They die.  They never make it to adulthood and discipleship. 

Thing is, its hard work being a parent.  It is relentless.  It is 24/7.  It can be boring, exhausting, confusing, scary and all consuming.  But that is what it takes and we willingly do it for our babies because we love them

The challenge for us as the church is this - do we love the not-yet-christian and the newborn christian enough to parent them through to independence?  Because if we don't do it who will?  And if we dont do it they might not survive.