When People Grow Slowly
Bamboo grows fast. Some bamboo-ologists say it grows roughly four inches per day in the right conditions. The fastest growing bamboo reportedly bursted up 35 inches in a day. That’s a growth you can watch. Oak trees are not like that. They grow about twelve inches per year. So, you can see an oak’s growth, but you can’t see it growing, unlike bamboo.
When it comes to a Christian’s growth in christlikeness, many of us are more like the oak than the bamboo. People can see our growth, perhaps. But they can’t usually see us growing.
That slow growth can cause us to ruffle each other’s feathers at times. That Christian friend of ours seems to never be able to grow out of that struggle. It’s been years, and that believer in the church can’t quite get traction in godliness in an area. “Why can’t they just grow out of that stuff?!”