“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”
When we step away from anything for a bit or take our eye away we can lose some perspective. Then we wonder, how can that happen? Well, as much as we’d like to think that everything should revolve around us and change at our pace, it just doesn’t work that way. I was asked by a good friend to step in on an interim basis and lead a part of his business. I was enticed. It is a fast growing company making a great impact and financially it would have been good too. However, upon evaluation of where I am today, my perspective would not likely have been what the company needed. Sometimes our perspectives are further away than what is required and sometimes our perspective can be too close and narrow to see the bigger picture. Regardless, it is on us to know what our perspective is at any given time and then be honest about what we can, can’t, should and shouldn’t do. Oh, and the perspective we have today may well expire tomorrow so if we want the most up to date perspective, we will have to constantly renew it.
Part or our faith journey is to have a perspective that matures. Paul challenges the Corinthians to “grow up” in Christ and to put away the childish things that they once might have cared about and sought. Terry Brisbane, my Pastor at CornerstoneSF, made an important clarification a few weeks ago as he taught about “Healthy Love” from 1 Corinthians Chapter 13. He reminded us that “childish” and “childlike” mean two different things. We are to put our childish perspective away and still retain our childlike perspective in order to receive the most from what God wants to teach us. Some would say that perspective is all about where you have come from. I believe God wants our perspective to be all about where we are going.
Reference: 1 Corinthians 13:11 (New Living Translation)