Tempest, my middle child, recently celebrated her 8th birthday. One of the things that we do around birthdays is to mark height on a height chart that we have in our house. The chart showed that she had grown almost 3 full inches since her last birthday! I tried to imagine what that would be like – for me to grow 3 inches. I wouldn’t quite clear 6 ft yet, but I’d be a lot closer. How tall would you be after a 3 inch boost?

When we told Tempest, she lit up with smiles and excitement, proudly pointing out where she was on the chart when I got home. That is kind of an interesting thing. She pointed out how much she had grown, but she hadn’t done much intentionally to grow. It wasn’t like she was stretching herself out on a rack every night. But she still grew, and she was delighted in her growth.

I think that kind of growth is something we can celebrate in Advent. It’s the kind of growth Paul is talking about in I Corinthians 3 when he says to them, “I planted, Apollos (another Christian leader during Paul’s time) watered, but it was God who gave the growth.”

There is other growth that we can have a little more control over. We can go the gym and press weights in the hope and expectation that our muscles will grow and they probably will – God gives that growth as well, just in a different way. I think sometimes we think about Christian growth only in that sense, of our getting to the ‘spiritual gym’ of pounding Scriptural texts and repping good works. While there’s certainly something to celebrate there, there is also much to celebrate in the kind of growth that Tempest experienced – the kind where we just wake up to what God has been doing slowly over time as we have confessed our sins, sat through Bible studies and sermons, and taken the Lord’s Supper together.

This Advent, let’s not forget to celebrate the growth that God has given us slowly over time. Let’s look at the marks on the wall and celebrate that He has given the growth in our souls, getting them ready to be all grown up in the Resurrection.