When I was a child I did childish things (understandably). I remembered yesterday how I had admired a friend’s digital watch (they were new and exciting then) and especially how it had some solar panels on it to prolong the battery life. That was amazing. I had been given a digital watch for my birthday and was very pleased with it but it didn’t have a solar panel.

Not the actual watch

For some reason (I put it down to being a child and doing childish things) I persuaded myself that my digital watch did have a solar panel, but rather than being a separate panel on the watch mine was built into the display. I wonder if it started with me making it up to show off to my friends and then gradually believing my own publicity. When we went on holiday (months later) this spin / exaggeration / lie / self-delusion led me to leave my wrist in the sunlight on a car journey in order to charge up the watch.

The problem was that my watch did not have a supercool new-fangled innovative solar panel in the LCD display. It was a bog standard LCD watch and the heat from the sun, intensified through the glass, led to the display ‘melting’ and the digits became splodges. If anything rather than showing off a solar powered watch I had invented the world’s first LCS watch – Liquid Crystal Splodge.

When I was a child I did childish things. Now I am an adult I still do childish things. Don’t you? Do you sometimes spin / exaggerate the truth / lie / delude yourself? Do you believe your own publicity?

No? So when people ask you how you are don’t you sometimes smile that sweet, superficial smile and say that everything is okay when you are churned up inside? And don’t you tell yourself that if you say it often enough it will be true?

Or when you have got away with something without being found out don’t you tell yourself that it’s okay because you didn’t get caught and nobody got hurt and anyway you’re okay, and you end up doing it again?

Or when you got angry with someone who made a mistake or let you down don’t you tell yourself that it’s not your fault and that your reaction was entirely justified and you don’t make mistakes?

These childish things are part of what God’s Spirit is seeking to help us with if we will let him. It’s call ‘maturing’ (which means that we are also immature). But it’s not something he does to us. He does it with us. He needs our permission and cooperation.

Be blessed, be a blessing