Eugene Peterson, who wrote a paraphrase of the Bible in modern English, The Message, and many other acclaimed books on the Bible and the Christian faith, has published some of his earlier sermons preached to his congregation in Bel Air, Maryland, where he was founding pastor and served there twenty-nine years. It is entitled As Kingfishers Catch Fire, which is taken from one of one of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poems.
I would like to share with you three paragraphs on Christian maturity from his sermon on Philippians 4:13.
Immaturity is that in-between stage between innocence and experience, when we think that by changing what we have or whom we are with or where we are, we can change ourselves. Maturity arrives in a way of life that has form and substance developed from our insides and that knows the significant acts are our responses. Christian maturity experiences that responsiveness when shaped and renewed by faith in Christ.
Mature Christians are able to do all things because they don’t have to do everything. They acquire strength to live because they don’t have to be anxious and constantly attentive to trivia, and they don’t have to take responsibility for the whole world on their shoulders.
There are a great many things we can do little or nothing about. The weather is out of our hands. Other people’s emotions are out of our hands. The economy is out of our hands. Mostly we have to live with what families or our bodies or our government hands to us. But there is one enormous difference that is in our hands: we can offer up the center of our lives to the great revealed action of God’s love for us. We can discover that each of us is an absolutely unique individual. We can cultivate the vitality and centering of life that develops out of risking our lives in a relationship with God.
When we do that, we find Paul’s statement neither extravagant nor fanciful: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil.4:13).
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