Our family television has this feature that when we turn on the tv or back out of a streaming service, we see some pictures from my Google Photos account. Our family loves to see the pictures and comment on the growth and the memories. As a kid, I used to love to look back at old photo albums that my grandparents had, looking at pictures of my parents, myself, and others.
When Luke records Jesus’ growth in Luke 2:52, he tells us that Jesus grew “in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and man.” The word for “stature” there is one that implies physical growth and maturity. Essentially, Luke was telling us that Jesus didn’t remain in the body of a 12 year old for his entire life. Of course, we take this sort of physical maturing growth for granted until we see it displayed to us in something like a picture.
All we need to do is look back at baby pictures to marvel in the wonder of growing in stature. Whether you are looking at your own or someone else’s, you can marvel at growth. One of the things that I marvel at is the clarity of hindsight. When I looked at my daughter Tempest when she was a baby, I couldn’t tell you what she was going to look like in the future. When I look at her baby picture now though, I can see her current day facial figures reflected in her baby face.
The problem is that we somehow think that we can get by without maturing. An especially noxious version of this problem is to think that forgiveness simply brings us to some point of antediluvian perfection, our own spiritualized version of being a baby or a 12 year old. But forgiveness doesn’t reverse engineer our maturity, it actually drives it forward.
I remember a story of a man who visited a 1st grade classroom asking the teacher while the desks were so small. “So that the students know they won’t fit in them forever,” the teacher responded. Forgiveness doesn’t reduce our capacity for maturity and growth, it makes our maturity and growth possible by upholding our connection to the source of our growth, the very God of the universe. He does not want to see His creation stall out in us in the same way that He doesn’t want to see a flower never bloom. He creates, grows, and upholds us so that the beauty of His creation can be seen.
This God grows our bodies, our intellects, our relationships, our spiritual practices, and our stewardships – all through forgiveness. So let us marvel in the hindsight of our growth, recognizing how far God has brought us by His grace. And let us imagine a day when our present maturity will look like baby pictures in a photo album because He continues to sprout growth in us.