Maturity Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

I was browsing through my "timeline" and previous blog posts in my old "site" to take my mind off from a number of things I have yet to do. When times like these strike, I knew I am low on inspiration. Well, looking back on old notes and photos can be both encouraging and frustrating. It can be encouraging when you see how far and better you have become. On the other hand, it can be frustrating when things do not change.

Change. God has been inviting me to a lot of changes lately; changes that I have painfully and tearfully accepted  because, even if it was totally against my will, I believe my decisions would lead me closer to Him. I initially dreamed of becoming a "brilliant broadcast journalist and a contemporary Christian singer roaming around the world preaching about Jesus" (taken verbatim from our high school yearbook published in 2002) when I was 16. Now, ten years after, I am a full-time writer at a government agency, wherein part of my job is to produce and co-anchor a one-hour radio program for the war veterans twice a week. Meanwhile, the closest to becoming a contemporary Christian singer was through Shine for Jesus 2005, a nationwide search for a new generation of Gospel artists. And the farthest I have ever been to northerly is Hongkong and southerly, Palawan.

Lala Nostalgia: the 5-year old me and the 26-year old me

This evening, I can hear God clearly echoing to me that line from Paul's letter to the Corinthians:

"When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. 

But when I grew up, I put away childish things." 

I guess it's time to give up childish dreams - dreams that are products of my infinitesimal brain and limited vision of what is ahead. Not that these are insignificant to God. But that He had bigger and better things in mind. And the only thing that's keeping most of us from experiencing the grand things He has set for us is when we hold on to the past and keep on dragging with us the things that should be left behind.

 For Paul adds:

"Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, 

but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. 

All that I know now is partial and incomplete, 

but then I will know everything completely, 

just as God knows me completely."

Completely. I delight in the truth that our God - no matter how imperfect, frustrated, twisted our ways could be in our attempt to follow Him - had already laid out everything for us even before this world began. I believe it was not presented to us in full because we would not have something to look forward to when we already know what's in the future. And this would invalidate faith, which is having hope for things yet unseen.

Besides, there could be no more bitter state than having nothing new to wake up to everyday, or learn or improve about yourself. This is why our God challenges us to new things, shaking even our longstanding foundations and beliefs about ourselves just so we will not be complacent.

For this is true faith: that we are transformed and renewed by Him and His Word every day. And the challenge here is that we never give up on Him. For God will keep on changing us until we are able to reach maturity beyond our wildest dreams.


P.S. Special thanks to Ate Joy Cruz, for sharing her 28-year old self to the world. It made me realize a LOT of things. (read here)