It was an astonishing conclusion, though I don’t remember when it came to me. As I grew up I looked forward to the day when I’d be grown up. I assumed that I’d cross some clear, luminescent line when I’d turn into a grown up. For some years I worried that I was behind. Eventually the eureka moment came. Not when I became a grown up, but when I realized that moment would never come. I’m a grandparent more than a dozen times over yet I’m still the same kid who believed all was right with the world if I had a pocketful of bubblegum.
While we are called to mature, the wisdom of experience tells us that much of us, what was part of us from the start, stays with us all our days. Consider fencing. No, not sword play, but safe play. Experts tell us that little children crave the security that comes from limitations. Put a passel of tikes in a sandbox and their imaginations will take them around the world. Put those same wee ones in an open field and they become fearful. Even from birth babies are more at ease bound burrito-like in a blanket than let loose.
What if we never outgrow that? What if there will always be something comforting to us in limitations imposed on us? What if, from birth to death we flourish best when confined? What if the reason we never leave childhood and enter adulthood is because we are now and always will be His children? And what if our security is bound up in being bound up inside the fence of His good law?
Outside the fence we find destruction and death. What looks to us, in moments of temptation, as greener grass is the poison that drove our first parents, when they were still new, east of Eden. Outside the fence we forfeit the protection of our Father. Inside the fence we are ever under His protective watch.
As this year draws to a close we enter another season of resolutions. Some of us will resolve to lose the pounds that found us during our feasting. Others will resolve to shed this vice, and others to cultivate that virtue. There’s not a thing in the world wrong with that. The only trouble is when we spend our energy so focused on shoring up the south fence that we fail to see the fence has toppled to the north, east and west. That is, what we need is not merely to improve in this area or that.
What we need is to resolve to love and obey His law. All of it. We need to understand that God’s law isn’t Him capriciously spoiling all our fun, but is Him tenderly leading us in the safe paths of righteousness. His law is good, a gift, a blessing, a reflection of His glory.
Whether you are young or old, whether you, like me, have the aches and grey hairs of the aged with the uncertainty of childhood all in one package, as we enter together into a new year we get one year closer to home, one year closer to both the fullness of maturity and sitting in our heavenly Father’s lap. Give thanks.
For a book length consideration of our call to be like children I commend my book The Call to Wonder, available here.
