Stages of Life

 

It seems a long, long time on my morning walks since I have happened upon a random and interesting item dropped by someone along the way. Over these now 9 months I have found gloves and hats and glasses and socks. I have always wondered how the owner never missed them, or at least never came back to look for them.

This one really stopped me in my tracks. What happened to the baby? They weren’t even finished with their breakfast! Didn’t the baby cry? Didn’t the family arrive back at home and wonder what happened to the bottle? Did another passerby see the lonely bottle and also leave it alone, thinking the family would soon return to claim it? What about the baby?

One of the images of scripture that speaks to the growth process of the spiritual life is found in 1 Peter, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” I like the matter-of-fact ways the Bible speaks about life. Life is a journey. We are born, we spend time as a baby, a child, a youth, an adult. We mature and grow. All the stages are where we are supposed to be at the time. The key is to keep moving along the way. We aren’t meant to stop permanently in any one stage of development. Even as adults, the learning should not stop. We are to continue to mature, to go deeper, to strive. In other words, we are on a journey designed with the destination always in front of us, always in view, but we never quite arrive. This is what keeps us spiritually alive and growing across the entirety of life. It is the way life is meant to be.

So maybe the mystery baby was done with baby things and simply tossed the bottle aside on the way home to bacon and eggs. Their baby stage was over and they were trying on their big kid life. After all, that is the way it is supposed to be.

Peace.