Matthew 17:14-27
Some of the tallest trees in the world grow in California. They are commonly known as coastal or California redwoods. Theyare actually from the sequoia family of trees. They grow on average over 200 feet or 60 meters in height. The current tallest tree is the Hyperion measuring 379 feet or 115 meters in height. It has a diameter of around 29 feet or 8.9 meters. Now I’m told that in Sequoia national park, you can drive a car through the cut out trunk of one of the redwoods. Have any of you actually seen them?
These trees are massive. How long do you think they took to grow? One year? 5 years? 30 years? 100 years No. Scientists or Botanists or whatever you call the tree people conclude that the redwoods have lived 1200 to 1800 years. They are some of the oldest living things on earth. Some of them go back to within 200 years of the time of Christ.
Any tree that grows to strength and maturity takes time.They move from seedlings to saplings to young trees to maturity. In a similar way it takes time for followers of Christ to grow. Sometimes, we want instant maturity in following Jesus. But its a daily journey and includes some stumbles along the way. That’s part of life and that’s part of discipleship.
If you think back to your Christian walk this past month, there were hopefully times of growing closer to the Lord. But there were probably other times where we stumbled. We may have said something we shouldn’t have or done something harmful. We may have adopted an unbiblical perspective of God and lived by that. Or we may have shown little or no faith in Him.
We’re called to grow as disciples or followers of Jesus Christ. We enter into a journey of discipleship from the moment of our con version until the moment of our death or Christ’s return. It would be nice if it was one continuous journey of successive stages of growth. But we stumble. We slide sometimes. We fail to learn a lesson and have to repeat it.
