It is hard for me to process aging. It feels like it happened all of a sudden. One minute I was agonizing over a new pimple outbreak and the next I was discovering a new wrinkle.
Sometimes when I look at pictures, I try to remember what I felt like in my younger days. As I pick my way slowly up and down steps and hope not to fall, I wonder how this could be the same person who once ran like the wind and was even pretty good at the high jump in track.
God is very merciful in how He changes us gradually. None of us is really aware of how we changed from that cute little baby into our current version of ourselves.
According to one source, about 330 billion of our cells are replaced daily. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.
This all happens without our knowledge or permission. Sometimes growth comes with pain. Growing pains can be real, whether they are in children becoming teenagers or in us more mature people growing into the bodies we will have in heaven.
Instead of looking back and wishing for our bodies of yesterday, we should look forward to the bodies we will have next.
If big caterpillars had a choice of returning to being little caterpillars or becoming a butterfly, I suspect they would choose being a butterfly.
Whatever aches and pains we have now are simply growing pains. We are getting ready for the day we will have a growth spurt.
And what will we look like then?
In speaking of our new bodies, Paul said,
“What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power!”
1 Corinthians 15:42-43
John said,
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is!”
1 John 3:2
How long will it take?
Paul said it would happen
“In a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye …”
1 Corinthians 15:52
So at whatever stage you are in life, look forward, not backward. God has continued creating you and He is not done yet!
