Growing up, we never had a door jam measuring ritual; you know the one I’m talking about – where the kids line up against the wall, and each inch of growth is dutifully accounted for.
This lack of formal acknowledgment didn’t stop my sister and I from regularly measuring and comparing our heights. We would stand back to back to see who was taller. We would ask my mom to bring out her measuring tape. We would angle to see which one of us was most quickly approaching the heights of our shorter relatives. As kids, we intuitively cared about the progress we were making, even over something that we had very little control of.
What we knew as kids however, is often forgotten as adults. As we get older, we might not getting any taller, but as Christians we should still be growing, for we should be growing in our relationships with Christ. And just as the measuring tape proved a useful instrument for capturing our increase in height as a child, so we must regularly ascertain our spiritual progress. We must take into account where we were previously, and how God has stretch us to become more like His Son. We must chart the fruits that are being developed in us. We must measure our growth; not in order to feel good about ourselves or boast in what’s happened to us, but to give God glory for what He has done, and to make sure that we are constantly “working out our salvation” (Phil. 2:12) and deepening our walk with Him.
When kids run up to the door jam and see that they’ve grown another quarter of an inch, they celebrate as if they had won the Super Bowl. How much more so should we acknowledge and celebrate what God is doing in our lives!
