The picture above is of my old toybox my dad made for me before my memory of it. It’s pretty big, and I could fit all my toys in it as a child. I remember sitting in front of it one day, thinking of all my toys, how much I loved them and loved playing with them when I was overcome with a sense of dread. Old people didn’t play with toys. They didn’t have a toybox. I couldn’t imagine life without my toys and wondered what exactly happened to people when they grew up that they just lost interest in such important things!
Skip forward to a few decades and I’m sitting in my classroom with one of my 16-year-old students. He was asking me about Drake. I was impressed he knew what a male duck was. It was a minute or so when we realized we were having a breakdown in communication. He was talking about the rapper. I had no idea there was a rapper named Drake. Only partly to himself he said, “Wow. I don’t ever want to get old.”
But we do, don’t we? And as we do, we put away our toys and move on, with very little regret and fuss. But how about spiritually?
Think about it! Wasn’t a big problem in the Corinthian church really a refusal to grow up spiritually (I Corinthians 3:2)? God had given them gifts and they were completely enamored with some of them over others, particularly speaking in tongues. They were treating them like their own personal toys and wanted to show off like second-graders in show-and-tell! They were metaphorically pushing and shoving each other around, treating worship like a school playground, while quite literally talking over one another. Paul, like an exceptionally patient parent, walks them through the proper use of the gifts and then says they need to focus on something far more important, something that will never pass away, and that is love. And then he lays it on the line – “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
And it strikes me – how can we be sure we are growing up spiritually? Paul would say we can tell when we no longer are concerned about our position or glory. We can tell when we extend grace to those around us and see the best in our brothers and sisters. We can tell when we chose the way that builds others up rather than puffs ourselves up. We can tell when we stand firmly in what remains after all the chaff is blown away. And all of this is the way of love….
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”