Day 31 - The Seedling

Not everyone understands how and why we should long to possess more of something of which we are already full. It is an innate and in-built desire for development; it is a principle planted under grace in our constitution.

Every living thing, large or small, animal or vegetable or human, consciously or unconsciously struggles to conform to type. When the little plant bursts through the ground, it starts out on a growth pattern conforming to the type that it carries in its genes. In the heart of the acorn is a miniature oak-tree. A little new-born chick carries inside it an image of the mother bird, to which it will quite naturally, though unconsciously, conform as it grows.

In the natural world we describe, when things reach the highest point of their own development, they will begin to deteriorate and decay; but this is not true in the spiritual realms. Never during your lifetime, and possibly never in that heavenly life stretching out in front of you, will you reach the fullness of your species, or, in other words, the highest point of your own development. As the acorn or the little chick carries in its genes an image of the parent, so the Christian carries in his soul the image of God, in fact the perfect image of the invisible God. This is the image into which you are to grow.

Day after day you can grow in grace. Day after day the beautiful graces of the Spirit can become more beautiful and your outward life can be more apparently stamped with the holy image of God.

But then why does God yearn so intensely for the prayers and devotions of our hearts? Because yours is another young life struggling to conform to the image in which it was created. Yours is another soul which has been won for God and in which he has his throne.