1 Corinthians 13.11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I
reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind
me. – St. Paul
On Wednesdays, my church has a kids ministry (boys and
girls) during the school year called: Royal Rangers. It is a curriculum/experience
based ministry where kids are taught to earn various merits: cooking, camping,
photography, hiking, and the like. There is everything from first-aid, to
bicycle safety. It also includes Bible teaching and general living principles from
a godly perspective. We use Royal Rangers to introduce children to the concept
of leadership in hope of raising them to accept the leader mantle as they grow into
adulthood.
We have a saying: boys
will be boys, until they are taught to become men. For girls, it is the
same: girls will be girls, until they are
taught to become women.
Adulthood isn’t just a date on a calendar. I know plenty
of boys who are in their sixties and seventies. I once worked at a large
box-store retail company that sold toys. Each year at Christmas, we sold Hot
Wheels®
cars, cheap, as a way to draw people into the store. It wasn’t the kids looking
for the cars, it was these older children in their fifties, sixties, and
seventies buying these stupid little toys. Collectors, they fancied themselves.
And the stuff older guys buy trying to reclaim the magic of Christmas from their
days of their pre-adolescence. Yikes!
Paul said, When I
was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a
child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. The
hinge is: what makes a man? Age? Maturity? Experience? Do we, one day, grow up
and cease to be children, and then take on adult things? Paul grew up one day: day
after day, after day, of getting there…
I don’t think Paul grew up different than many other
Jewish boys in his day, but the goal for him (and his peers) was to become a man,
not just a grownup child. The stresses of life can make us want to revert to
simpler times. I didn’t balance a check book as a child; I never worried that
we’d run out of pancakes. I had clothes and shelter, and a warm bed to sleep
in. But I never had to concern myself with providing those things for myself.
My parents did all that.
But becoming a man means taking on the more serious side
of life and thinking as an adult should think: marriage, home, career, etc. And
leadership. Adults are to lead the next generation into their adult years. But
often, as things become more complicated, the current generation is reluctant
to fight, and the next generation isn’t so willing to follow; they’d rather
remain children.
In our faith and in our relationship with God there comes
a time when we must become men, and women. There comes a time when we adults
must put childish things aside. We must at some point: grow up; the world and
our very way of life is at stake.
Father, some of us
get it sooner than later, but I pray for the days of my life to become more
increasingly leader quality, and that I would forsake my nagging, unrepentant childishness.
Fill me with You Spirit to be a man today, and put childish things aside!
Amen.
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