Why kids cant walk in a straight line

 Im lying in my bed looking out of my bedroom window. Laptop on my knee - its where I most often tend to be these days since Im back on furlough.  Why turn on the heating when you can just get under the duvet?  Anyhow, my bedroom has a view over the local park, and now the leaves are off the trees I can see more of it than I usually can.   This morning my eye was caught by something happening over the road and I realised the local primary school, which backs onto the park, were out with the kids doing their daily mile. 

Have you heard of the daily mile?  If not you can look it up - but its basically a way of getting all kids in primary school to walk/run a mile every day for fun in an attempt to build habits which lead to healthy lifestyles.   Today one class of kids were making their way along the parks pathways accompanied by two teachers.  As I watched I noticed something.  Kids dont walk.  They jump, they spin, they hold hands with their mates and weave about the path whist chatting.  They wear their coats on their heads and round their waists and with one arm in and one arm out.  They run and barge into each other and hop and skip. Teachers walk in a straight line.  Kids never do.

Given that my attention was drawn to this today I had a little wonder about whether God wanted to say anything about kids walking in the park.  And it didnt quite go where I expected .... ! 😀

Kids are amazing and free and honest and unspoiled. But we dont stay kids.  At some points we hit adolescence.  My three boys are now 15, 18 and 19.  My 15 year old is teetering on the brink of full blown ' Kevin the teenager mode'  The 18 yr old is slap bang in the middle of the eye rolling, grunting, door closing phase.  The 19 year old emerged out of that phase about a year ago and has, surprisingly, turned into a thoroughly decent adult human being.  We all know why we go through these different stages of life - we need to become independent, stand on our own feet and have our own opinions. It would be brilliant if we could just spend our entire lives skipping through the park and playing at life. But we cant.

We cant spiritually either.

Ive spent the last ten or so years feeling, spiritually, like a grumpy adolescent.  Ive displayed all the attributes in my spiritual life that my kids are displaying in their actual lives right now.  I have disagreed with my spiritual leaders and rolled my eyes at them more times than Id care to admit.  Ive been bored with church and metaphorically played on my phone during sermons whilst telling myself I already know it all.  Ive shut my bedroom door on the family of God and just wanted to hibernate cos I found them all so annoying.   I do hope Im not alone here 😂  I suspect quite a few of us are moving through our spiritual adolescence at the moment.  I do long for the good old days when I had no spiritual responsibilities , when I knew very little and just enjoyed the fresh air of the presence of the Holy Spirit without any need to watch out for bumps in the road cos there was a grown up there to watch out for me.   

As a spiritual teenager ( Ive been a Christian for 35 years so maybe Im a very late developer ) I know that I have learned most of what I need to now be able to make it on my own out there in the big wide spiritual world.  Ive honed skills, developed habits, learned about myself, others and God.  I've grown up through church and seen new generations of spiritual babies coming up behind me.  I've also been super blessed to have the most amazing spiritual parents going ahead of me. I've tried to put aside childish things and hunger for meat. But this is a scary spiritual age to be.  I don't feel like a grown up yet.  I have wild ambitions ( yes, still ) to do amazing things for God but now I have some of the wisdom and experience to know that there's a price to pay.  Adolescence is a tricky time of waiting, and a scary time of not knowing.  I wonder if Jesus ever felt like this before He stepped out into the limelight age 30 to begin doing what He was created to do.  

As teenagers my boys still sometimes revert to being kids.  They wrestle and joke and tease each other.  The youngest can still sometimes come to me for a bit of a hug and some help. But mostly they are not children any more - they are men. They need different things from me these days.  Just as I need different things from the church and from my spiritual elders.  I know that I sometimes yearn for the days when life was simple, everything seemed super clear and straightforward, spirituality was exciting and dangerous and I thought I knew everything there was to know about everything.   Now I just know I don't know much about anything and it all seems rather complicated and daunting.

Isn't it amazing, in the light of all the above, that Jesus chose to come to us as a seed in a woman, be born as a baby and grow through all the stages of personhood to become an adult?   He could have just arrived as a man.  But there is a lesson to be learned from the journey we take from childhood to adulthood and Jesus lived it out for us to watch and understand. Even Jesus was a tricky teen who disappeared from the family party without telling his parents where he was going and stayed away far too long in a place He shouldn't have been. 😀

If you feel like a spiritual adolescent right now then take heart. You are growing up.  Your spiritual hormones might be raging, but this is a necessary phase to go through in order for you to fully become the person God has called you to be.  Pray that the people around you have grace and wisdom to handle you, that God accelerates the process, and that you don't hurt or offend anyone as you work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.   Happy Thursday!!