My daughter is ten months old and is discovering how to move. She shuffles along on her bottom really well but I’ve read one too many parenting books which have scared me into insisting she crawl. After all, how else will the left side of her brain know about the right side?! Most people laugh at me about this, others are appalled, but I continue preserving with it encouraged by one thing – I think she really wants to crawl. Sometimes she’ll just throw her face and arms to the ground and then let out a cry of frustration that her legs haven’t miraculously made their way behind her. On her tummy she’s pull her legs inward with palms punching the ground, willing the middle of her body to rise up, letting out a screech when she slides backward instead of forward.
And I guess that’s what’s surprised me – how frustrating it is for her. She somehow knows what she should be doing, but knows she isn’t doing it. She tries and tries and I have faith one day it will happen, but it hasn’t happened today.
Watching her brings to mind a less physical, but still very real, struggle which I face – the struggle to be who God wants me to be. Like Paul I “want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway” (Romans 7 v 18b and 19).
I frustrate myself when I know I should be kind but can’t bring myself too. When I set everything up to have a positive day but fall into moaning and gossiping. I must look to God like my daughter looks to me.
But here’s the thing – I have faith in my daughter. I believe she will crawl, and then walk and then run. We talk about faith sometimes as if it is a one way thing – we have faith in God, yes, but God also has faith in us. Faith that we can become more like him. That we might choose that. And just as my daughter has everything she needs to learn how to crawl I have everything I need to become like Christ – I have his very Spirit. And so do you.
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