Stages of life

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When we are young, growing older means growing bigger and doing ever more interesting and challenging things.  Everyone celebrates the stages of growth, beginning with our weight and length (which later becomes height) and continuing with crawling, talking, walking and on through the school years of achievement pointing to career development...marriage and children of our own.  My father used to describe it as the cycle of life.  But, after physical maturity there comes a time when we don't celebrate weight gains...we don't get any taller (in fact we start to settle and shrink a bit)...we reach a point where our own children are grown and our careers have peaked and we aren't climbing the rungs of physical attainment like we did so eagerly in earlier years.  I would suggest that our lives are like a multi-stage rocket.  Like the massive Atlas booster of the Apollo space program, our early years lift us off the launch pad and into orbit, but we need another stage of power after the booster falls away to carry us out of earth's orbit and on to Heaven.   The second stage of our rocket comes when we are born again as faith is ignited and we find that we are no longer pushing away from Earth's attraction...we are now racing toward the Lord.  There is no resistance in space from atmosphere and a rocket tends to continue on and on after one firing of its new stage.  When we are born the second time...spiritually...the thrust is provided that will surely take us all the way.   The older we get, the younger we grow as we gradually move through the stages of understanding the sure trajectory toward God and the vast dimensions of Eternity.

 

Psalm 139:16 Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
                         all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
                         The days of my life all prepared
                          before I'd even lived one day.

 

blessings to all the eternal youngsters out there,

Rob Smith