I am not tall. For a very brief period in my history, I was tall: when I left primary school, I was one of the tallest in my class, being about five feet tall. My father (whose side of the family were all tall) had high hopes that I would follow in their footsteps. It was not to be. I grew very little in the remaining years (perhaps just under two inches!) and clearly took after my mother’s side of the family, after all.
For a brief period of time in my life, my son thought I was tall. And I was… in comparison to him! But that’s not saying much when you are a toddler or small child. He was barely fourteen when he grew taller than me and then took great delight in calling me ‘shrimp.’ Being small can be frustrating at times: reaching things out of the kitchen cupboards is a major task for me, requiring steps, whereas he can simply stretch up and bring down the requisite item. On the other hand, being small can have its advantages: I never bang my head on the cupboard doors when they are open, for example, because my head doesn’t reach the bottom of the doors!
So it was with some relief that I read the following quotation in Eugene Peterson’s ‘Practise Resurrection’: ‘growing up in Christ means growing up to a stature adequate to respond heart and soul to the largeness of God.’ (P 130) I may never be tall in the natural sense of the word, but I can stand tall in Christ and can be part of the amazing largeness of God!