Continuity Is Key

I'm the type of person that notices everything. I kind of drive my wife nuts because when we are watching a movie or TV show, I'm constantly catching continuity issues in the shows. For instance, we were watching a show a few days ago in which a doll was "magically" appearing in two different places. The camera would pan left and the doll was in a chair in the background, but when it panned right, a man in the show mysteriously had the doll in his hands. It happened 2 or 3 times and then when the camera panned left again, the doll was no longer in the chair. This happens because they do not always shoot the scenes in the order we see them, and that leads to small issues like this, and books reappearing where they had already been removed, glasses containing drinks being empty and then magically being filled again, and so on. Things like that happen in shows frequently. In lower budget shows they opt not to reshoot those scenes to save dollars and just hope it is not noticed. A few catch it, but by and large, it is not by most people. I only explain this to explain what a continuity issue is. 

This morning I was talking on the phone with someone I know who has really been struggling in their spiritual life and I said to them that they were getting the pieces out of order, (a continuity issue) and it was messing up their lives. Without going into specifics of what we were discussing, suffice it to say that that this person is trying to "skip ahead" in their spiritual journey and it was causing a lot of painful issues as they (as they termed it) "keep failing God, over and over." The issue is that this person has been in and around church a lot in their life but had only recently surrendered their life to Christ. Because they have been around the church all of these years, they just assume they can and should do what they saw other mature Christians doing. I tried to explain to this person that what they were trying to do was run a marathon when they were still crawling. I reminded them of the words of an old Beatles song that says, "Children, don't you do what I have done. I couldn't walk and I tried to run." The point is, that just as there is a natural progression of growth and maturity in the physical body, so there is in the spiritual life. I have a granddaughter who is four months old. She is growing and changing rapidly, but she still takes a bottle to eat. She eyes what I'm eating, and reaches for it, but if we gave her the food that we eat, she could not handle it. She might choke on it, and could even die. If she managed to get it swallowed, it would probably make her very sick. She is simply not ready for adult food yet. But the day will come! And so it is for my friend as well as for those reading. Be patient. Grow and progress, but recognize where you are in this journey. The time will come when you will be prepared and ready to tackle the big things in life, but that comes as you grow, nurture and mature spiritually. Don't rush the process, or most likely you will fall and possibly do grave damage to yourself in the process. Trying to keep up with someone who has already matured spiritually would be as silly as a child trying to run the 100 meters with a full-grown adult. Stop doing that to yourself and enjoy the process you are going through!