It’s insane how we can all grow in age in the same way year after year but still be so deeply different. How god puts us on these journeys that don’t measure up with time at all but instead with the lessons and the evolution he intends to create in us. God’s plan for us defies time and the expectations of this world. Our experiences and encounters with life shape us and send us on paths that twist and turn to form us into whatever design god has in mind for us. Example how a 17-year-old can be so mature and aware of their decisions while a 33-year-old can still be lost and searching for guidance. Part of that is living long enough to know that everything you think you know is wrong but also part of it is access… or the lack of.

We judge others and hold such anger in our hearts for the injustices we feel have been done to us yet we have no compassion for others and the injustices done to them. We never consider their experience and how they came to be. In the same way, we judge others for not measuring up to what we feel we are & what we feel they are not in our eyes. We judge them based on what we feel they should be instead of trying to understand who they are and why. We don’t consider their life and the obstacles they faced over the ones we did not face that allowed us to be in the place where we feel so justified in our judgments.

I feel like when you step into your 30’s everything starts to unravel. All of the things you build in your own strength start to show themselves as what they are and all of the truths within you start to bleed out. Then you go on this journey of discovery and search and search and search until you feel you have the answers … you feel like you’ve healed, you feel like you’ve grown. Then one day you realize that you’re still the same.. you just painted a new picture.

& the work continues……….

‘Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.’

1 Timothy 4:12-16