LTP: June 2012

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Growing up...what is it? When does it happen? What is maturity and why does it matter anyway? My story isn't the same as your story or many other people's story. I've never left college. I graduated, worked for two years, got married, worked for four more years, and here I am. I'm 28 years old. Am I grown up? I live in a house with a lady. I have awesome credit. I walk my dog at 6:30 every morning (to be fair I've only done that in the last few days). I own a car. I have bills that I need to pay. Does that make me a grown up? The trend in the last decade or so is that 40 is the new 30 and 30 is the new 20. People are staying younger longer. It is harder to tell where someone is in their life based on their age. In the baby boom era people got married in their early twenties. In the nineties people got married in their mid twenties. Now men are getting married on average at twenty nine and a half. People are sowing their wild oats longer then they ever did before. Being young is exciting and being old isn't.
When I graduated from college six years ago I felt really weird walking around Union's campus. I didn't want to seem really old, but at the same time I didn't want to be looked at as a student. It was a good thing that I was dating Natalie. I don't know what would have been said of me if I would have been single. With every year that passes by I try to stay young. For some reason it is important to me. Right after my dad got married he grew a mustache so he could be seen as an older person that should be respected. Right after I got married I was worried that anyone would think I was older. The more and more that I think about this the more I disagree with myself.
When I think about all of the reasons I would want to be young and seem young all of them come back to be selfish. Lately I have been having devotionals every morning. I am sad to be reporting this as news. I wish that I could say that as a good Christian Seventh-Day Adventist that I have been having devotionals every day for my whole life, but that just isn't the case. I have alot to say about what I've been reading and maybe you have seen that my tweets lately have been for the most part quotes from the Desire of Ages. That is because lately the only thing that I want to talk about is how Jesus wants me to live. I want to know what God expects out of someone who calls themselves a Christian. As I read the bible and the Desire of Ages I find that God wants me to not care about myself at all. He wants me to die to myself and follow him. He wants me to live my life as if it wasn't about myself. He wants me to first of all glorify him and second of all tell people about how good he has been to me. These are all good theories to think about and say out loud but are they good theories to live by?
Being young and staying young is vanity. It should not concern me. As I put the things of little consequence to the side and focus on the things that mean a lot I begin to realize that Christ is asking me to be responsible. A person that follows Christ takes following Christ seriously. A person that is overly concerned with themselves is really not following Christ. The things that I thought were important have turned out to have very little importance. As I grow spiritually in my walk with the Lord I will also grow as an individual. Growing up is part of life if you are lucky. As we mature in our personal lives let us pray that we mature in our spiritual lives. I am going to keep on having devotionals every morning. God willing I will grow with him.