Get Real
“When I was a child, I spake as a
child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man,
I put away childish things.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
One
of the most critical questions in life that we have to ask is: "What does
it mean to grow up?" How do you know
when someone is mature? When is someone real?
Most of the time it doesn't have anything to do with age. At times, you will find 40-year old men who act like 13-years old and on other occasions, I've known some 13-year-old girls who live like they're 35-years old. Maybe you heard that question when as a young person, a friend asked, “What are you going to do when you grow up?”
We have interesting ways to assess maturity. If you are buying a ticket to a movie theatre, you're an adult when you reach 13-years of age. The state says you're old enough to drive when you are (depending on your state law) 15 or 16. Some even use the standard that you're old enough to vote when you’re 18 or even drink when you're 21. But maturity is far greater than that.
Margery Williams gave a classic answer in a book, The Velveteen Rabbit. It is the story of a little boy's nursery. The nursery was full of toy animals. One day a new toy rabbit came to live there. The rabbit wanted to know the secret of becoming real. He asked the skin horse, who was so old his brown coat was rubbing off, how to become real.
The old horse responded, "Real isn't how you're made, Rabbit. It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time ... then you become real." The rabbit then asked, "Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes," he answered. "Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and are very shabby. But these things don't matter at all because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Real isn't how you're made. Real isn't how old you are. It is a thing that happens to you. And the skin horse was right. It can be wearing to be loved by someone.
The most important thing in the world is to become "real." What matters is loving and being loved for a long, long time. Loving and being loved adds wrinkles and white hairs to your head and can make joints grow loose.
Most of the time it doesn't have anything to do with age. At times, you will find 40-year old men who act like 13-years old and on other occasions, I've known some 13-year-old girls who live like they're 35-years old. Maybe you heard that question when as a young person, a friend asked, “What are you going to do when you grow up?”
We have interesting ways to assess maturity. If you are buying a ticket to a movie theatre, you're an adult when you reach 13-years of age. The state says you're old enough to drive when you are (depending on your state law) 15 or 16. Some even use the standard that you're old enough to vote when you’re 18 or even drink when you're 21. But maturity is far greater than that.
Margery Williams gave a classic answer in a book, The Velveteen Rabbit. It is the story of a little boy's nursery. The nursery was full of toy animals. One day a new toy rabbit came to live there. The rabbit wanted to know the secret of becoming real. He asked the skin horse, who was so old his brown coat was rubbing off, how to become real.
The old horse responded, "Real isn't how you're made, Rabbit. It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time ... then you become real." The rabbit then asked, "Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes," he answered. "Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and are very shabby. But these things don't matter at all because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Real isn't how you're made. Real isn't how old you are. It is a thing that happens to you. And the skin horse was right. It can be wearing to be loved by someone.
The most important thing in the world is to become "real." What matters is loving and being loved for a long, long time. Loving and being loved adds wrinkles and white hairs to your head and can make joints grow loose.
Maturity or growing
up isn’t about an age, success, knowledge, have all the right answers, or even
get more religious. It happens when true love and compassion
begin to take shape in our hearts. Too
often, we use the wrong litmus test. God
has a different one.
Joe Bailey wrote a
book on grief, on losing a loved one. He
called it, A View From the Hearse. He says this from his experience: “I was sitting, torn by grief, and somebody
came along and talked to me about God's dealings of why it happened, of hope
beyond the grave. He talked
constantly. He said things I knew were
true. But I was unmoved, except to wish
that he would go away. And he finally
did. Then another one came and sat
beside me, and he didn’t talk at all. He
didn’t ask me any leading questions. He
just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something,
answered briefly, prayed simply and left.
I was moved. I was
comforted. I hated to see him go.” Someone said,
“Everyone brings happiness…some by coming and others by going. Those who are
real will always appeal.”
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul uses an
interesting verse to conclude his famous love passage. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things.” (v. 11) He reiterates that
realness comes through when a genuine and authentic walk arises in our lives;
though always a process. You see, religious people are a dime a dozen. Real ones are one in a million. Some act like
they have it to together and can even put on a front about it. But real people walk the walk and talk the
talk. They truly care, share, and have a
lot of prayer. The more we are becoming
like Christ, the more real our lives become.
Not a bad way to assess our growth rate.
Terry Risser
Reflections:
1) What standard have you
used to determine maturlty?
2)
How are you doing in the “real” category?
Consider reading the Word today:
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