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My grandfather Johnson was an inventor. Not a spectacularly successful inventor, mind you, but an inventor nonetheless. He was very creative. An idea man. An entrepreneur. During my childhood years, Grandpa Johnson owned a wood products company called Bel-Hill Products. It was named after Belmont Hill in Worcester, Massachusetts where all the Swedes settled when they came from Sweden to settle the area. The company made all sorts of containers out of wood – boxes, pet carriers, you name it. Unfortunately, this was at a time when plastics were just beginning to be developed as a more suitable material for such products, and it was only a matter of time before the world had passed my grandfather’s business by. But even then, Grandpa Johnson kept up with his inventions.

One of them was called “The Show-Grow”. Grandpa was good at giving things corny names. A  “Show-Grow” was a six-foot long, 1″ by 2″ pine board, with a channel routered into the center of the board. Into this channel was glued a six-foot long yellow tape measure. The key piece of the invention, though, was a 12-inch-long wooden crosspiece with a metal bracket on one end that allowed it to be slipped over the longer board, and then slid up and down perpendicular to the tape. And the purpose of it all was simply to provide a contraption that a child could be backed up against, the crosspiece lowered from the top until it rested on his head, and bingo – you knew how tall he was!!! And then, the promotional literature said, you could keep an official“Show-Grow” record of the child’s height each time you measured just by jotting it down inside the official “Show-Grow” notebook, and you would SHOW how much the kid had GROWN since the last time you did it!

I think my grandfather sold only as many “Show-Grows” as there were people in our family. He was disappointed of course, but he was so caught up in the marvel of his own invention that it never occurred to him that every family in the land already had a “Show-Grow” of sorts. You know the one I’m talking about – located on the inside doorframe of your kitchen where parents have measured their children and marked them with a pencil since the dawn of time! So “The Show-Grow” never took off and my grandfather eventually moved on to other equally as exciting inventions.

But despite his inability to capitalize on a market with that product, Grandpa Johnson had identified an important element of our humanity – the need to measure our growth as people!

 “We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters,” writes St. Paul to the Christians in Thessalonica, “because your faith is GROWING abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is INCREASING.”

It’s funny how, when our children are born, the most important piece of information – after knowing they are healthy – is how much they weigh, and how long they are. And these numbers are tracked pretty carefully because they document a child’s growth. In school, we test children – not to torment them (although taking tests always tormented me!) – but to assess the progress they are making in their education. Sometimes we measure our success in terms of the number of children we have, or the size of our house, or how popular we are, or the promotions we’ve received at work, or even by going onto the web each day to calculate our stock portfolios and determine our financial health.

Measuring ourselves is an important thing! It can identify problems that need to be corrected, and opportunities that need to be seized. Measuring ourselves can guide us into maximizing our lives!

And so God’s Word to us from Second Thessalonians underscores the importance of measuring ourselves as Christians. And the two dimensions of this measurement are not height and weight, not asset and liability, but rather faith and love.

Are you growing in your faith? Are you growing in your love?

It was the death of my inventor Grandpa when I was twelve years old that confronted me for the first time with the tragedy of life. As a child, I had learned a lot about God, about how he loves us, about how we can pray and ask him for anything, about how God is on the side of good and against evil. And in that terrifying moment of knowing that my grandfather’s death was near, I remember falling on my bed and pulling out that childlike faith. I begged the God of love and goodness to not let my grandfather die, and I reminded God that his Word promised I could ask for anything in Jesus’ name and he was supposed to do it.

And it was almost in that very moment of my pleading prayer that word came from grandpa’s house.

He was gone.

And you’ve experienced the same sort of thing. Growing up with a faith that had all the answers, all the solutions, all the tools for turning life your way. And then tragedy came. Or some other circumstance that rendered your faith powerless. And you came to a crossroads. In fact, you may be at one of those crossroads right now.

If so, it’s important to listen to St. Paul here because what he is saying in the passage is that there are times when our lives outgrow our faith. Let me say that again. There are times when our lives outgrow our faith. Like a lobster outgrows its shell, people outgrow their faith. And in verse 4, Paul teaches us that we most often experience this molting process when we face times of difficulty and affliction. Now God does not send tragedy upon us. But when tragedy comes, God is there to show us the way. And one of the gifts God often gives us in those moments of difficulty is the realization that our current faith is inadequate to handle it!!!

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the same experience, but I can tell you that I didn’t like God very much the day my grandfather died. And I’ve had lots of days like that – when life didn’t go my way – when life became bigger than my faith – and I turned my back on God out of anger.

And I used to think that this was a failing on my part. Something to feel guilty about. It never occurred to me, however, that my anger at God was in fact misdirected. It was actually an anger at having a faith that didn’t work – that didn’t really measure up to the moment – a faith that was too immature and too naïve and much too simplistic to come to grips in a healthy way with the death of someone I loved. Now I know that this anger was a gift God was giving me. I had thought it was my failing, but it turned out to be God’s gift! For it was an invitation to step out of the inadequate and simplistic shell of the faith of my childhood, and to start stepping into a more mature relationship with God. It was an invitation to come and grow in faith!

I would pray differently for my grandfather today. I would not pray that God would give me the gift of avoiding the tragedy of his death – because that’s what I was really praying for you know. No, today I would pray that God would do the best for my grandfather – whatever God knew the best to be. And I would pray differently for myself – not asking God to spare me from the hardship of losing someone I love, but to give me and my family the inner strength and the spiritual resources to live effectively through whatever result came along.

Immature Christians often focus their prayers on asking God to help them avoid the pitfalls of life. Don’t let the biopsy show cancer. Make the stock market go up! Change my husband! Change my wife! Make my son make the right decision. Get me a parking space. Don’t let it rain on our church picnic!

These are prayers that are based on the belief that happiness hangs on everything going your way! But the bible teaches us differently. There is a joy to be found that is greater than your circumstances. The worst that life has to offer can come your way, but God who loves you will lead you through it, safe to the other side!!! And it is this faith – that God is greater than your circumstances – that leads to true life and lasting happiness.

How is your faith growing? And not only your faith, but your love! Paul says that the love of the Thessalonian Christians is increasing!!! Well, how about the love of the Tellico Christians? Is our love increasing too?

And remember, the way God grows love is the same way God grows faith. When we run into difficulty, and hardship, and persecution and affliction – in other words, when we get to the point in life where we don’t have any love left to give – that’s when God opens the door to greater love. So we might ask in these current times of political divisiveness, are we growing in love through it? What is it you and I are learning through political controversy that makes us better Christian lovers today?

That question can make you nervous, huh?

Let’s try another. Seriously, if you want to measure your love and whether it’s growing, the first place to start is probably with your spouse or your kids. “Honey,” we might ask when we go home today, “do you think I’m more loving today than I was a year ago?” 

Now, I am not going to ask Jane this question because I can anticipate her answer, and the news may not be that good! But the way to measure your love is not by looking at the feelings in your own heart, but at the actual experience of those around you. Do the strangers who come to our church actually find us to be loving and welcoming people? Are we becoming better at loving those who are new? Do the poor and the hungry in our County find our love to be more widely reaching and more effective than last year? Is the reach of our love as a church extending itself further, including more people, and taking better care of people in Jesus’ name?

Is our love growing?

I’ll tell you what I think. I believe we are growing in love. I believe we are growing in faith! But there’s so much more growing we need to do! I know I need to grow! And as you go out into the world this week, I wonder if you might just ask God to help you grow into a faith that is big enough to face everything life has to offer – and to become a better Christian lover than you’ve ever been before!

I sure wish my grandpa Johnson had invented a “Show-Grow” for Christians! I think he would’ve cleaned up on that one. But he didn’t. And besides, God has already given us the measuring sticks we need. The upright is our faith. The crosspiece is our love. Friends, come, and let’s grow together!