Grow

Grow

Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN a fun reunion became an evening Laura simply endured. Stacy, her former college roommate, and Stacy’s husband were unexpectedly in town, and Laura had invited them to join their previously planned backyard BBQ. It was an eclectic guest list of neighbors, friends, and the life group Laura and her husband led through church, and Laura knew Stacy would fit right in.

While in college, Stacy had been actively involved in Bible studies while Laura struggled with her faith. Stacy had been an encouraging bystander to Laura’s earliest steps back to God, and after years of being connected only on social media, Laura was looking forward to Stacy seeing that she’d developed a deep and abiding faith.

During the course of the evening, Stacy’s patronizing tone, presumptive comments, and stories shared about Laura caught Laura off guard. Puzzling silently, Laura realized that Stacy’s view of her had remained frozen in time, stuck on the girl Laura was a decade ago. Stacy hadn’t paused to notice the woman Laura had become.

As Laura wiped down tables, the party long over and the guests gone, she processed the frustration she felt being “stuck” in that long ago moment of time, forever frozen in Stacy’s mind as someone Laura now barely recognized.

She paused to ask Jesus to help her recognize the growth, the journey in people around her rather than mentally flash freezing them, keeping them always as they were. Siblings, cousins, childhood friends, classmates, former coworkers—faces from these categories and more came to mind as she sifted through memories, asking God to forgive her for categorizing people with no opportunity for them to change, to grow.

Walking with Jesus is a journey, not an event. We’ll never get “there,” and we do our fellow travelers a grave injustice when we freeze them as we once knew them, allowing them no room to grow.

Lord, who have we flash frozen, making assumptions about who they are now based on the past? Help us to see those around us with fresh eyes and a current perspective. Amen.

-Julie

One Good Step: Determine to give others the opportunity to grow, mature, and become different people than the individuals you knew or know.