Baby steps

So in learning all the minute details in my new job I have found that an old dog really can learn new tricks.

But instead of "old dog" talk this past week I have heard a lot of baby analogies. I was AT work all last week but all I did was "observe." And after that it is very clear to me that I cannot learn by osmosis.

On Saturday the whole dispatch was handed off to me while all the "bosses" took the day off. I was the only one in the office and I was expected to set up the dispatch for Monday.

As I sat there struggling and at my wits end about what to do, I remembered a conversation about grandkids from the previous day. My manager was talking to me and said, " sometimes you have to stand a baby up and let go of them. They will fall down but you keep picking them up and trying again and again, until one day, they pick themselves up and take off walking."

It was an aha moment. He was referring to me. So, here I was last Saturday, the baby, standing alone and unsure of how to move my feet.

Well, I made decisions, entered it into the computer and left. I worried about it all weekend.

On Monday when I got to work, a few things had to be changed but it all worked out ok.

I was assured that I would "get it." That I wouldn't learn it in a day or a week and probably not even in a month.

But I had been a dispatcher before, for many years. I dispatched school buses. And if any mistakes were made there, you had kids standing out in the cold. At least in the scrap metal business, I don't have to worry about kids standing in the cold.

So as this week went on, each day I learned more. I was taking baby steps, and often needed to lean on others, but I am learning. I will get it and soon, I will be running.

That's the way of it, we learn in bits, we accept and grasp what we are able, as we are able. But we don't stop learning and growing or we will forever be walking baby steps. Can you imagine wobbling and stumbling your way through life?

Yet many people come into church as "babes in Christ" and never move beyond the milk of the word.

They come on Sunday mornings, sign their kids up for the youth programs, maybe even participate in the "willing workers" group themselves, but never get involved in a deep study of God's word.

It's time to move into the meat. Chew it, digest it. Dig into it. And grow. Don't remain unstable babies. 

Lord, create in us a desire to learn and grow.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— (1 Peter 2:2 ESV)

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14 ESV)

God desires for us to learn and grow in His word, yet He will sometimes "stand the baby (us) up and let go of us.

“ God left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.”

2 Chronicles 32:31 ESV 

Do not be afraid when faced with spiritual challenges and trials of life. Lean on what you know from God's word, trust Him because of His past care for you,  accept the challenge and face it with courage and strength.