“And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”
The Tree
This brief verse is nearly all scripture tells us about Jesus’s actual childhood, and it is worth noticing its shape: increased, ongoing growth, across four distinct dimensions, wisdom, stature, favour with God, favour with man. Even the Son of God’s own human development is described as genuine, gradual increase, not instant, complete maturity arriving all at once.
This offers a needed model for how you measure your own child’s growth. Not a single decisive moment of complete formation, but ongoing increase, across multiple dimensions simultaneously, intellectual and physical growth alongside spiritual and social growth, all developing together, gradually, the way even Jesus’s own humanity genuinely developed.
This should relieve pressure from expecting complete, mature character to arrive all at once in your own children, as if any single incomplete season represents permanent failure rather than simply where genuine, gradual increase currently stands. Even Jesus increased. Growth, by its very nature, takes actual time.
Consider today the actual increase, however gradual, you can genuinely observe in your child, across wisdom, physical growth, favor with God, and favor with others. Celebrate the increase itself, not merely the arrival of a finished, complete result you may still be a long way from seeing.
Tend the Tree
- Notice actual increase, however gradual, in one specific area of your child’s growth.
- Celebrate that increase today, rather than only measuring against a finished, complete standard.
- Trust the pattern of gradual, ongoing growth this verse describes, even in Jesus himself.
Prayer
Lord, even you increased in wisdom and stature gradually. Let me trust the same pattern in my own child’s growth, celebrating increase, not demanding instant completion. Amen.
Carry this today
Even Jesus increased gradually. Growth takes actual time.