The Fascination of Fatherhood!

The Fascination of Fatherhood!  It's amazing to watch young parents fawn over this newly acquired fixation.  

Once a young mother learns that she had conceived and the surprised father gets the news, a brand new fascination emerges that will last for several years.   What the new fascination is all about can be described in one word - "progress"!   The first little belly bump becomes a photo shoot.  The first sound of the heart beat becomes an announcement to close friends.  Regular visits to the doctor or midwife are scheduled to monitor one fixation - "progress"!  How big is the baby?  Who many centimeters has mom's belly grown?  This progress has been studied for so long that health care professionals have an ability to gage viability, and to pick up on any sign that would point to something abnormal.  The entire event of labor and delivery is always a vigil filled with progress reports for anxious family members and friends.  How many centimeters? How hard are the contractions and how long?  How close is she to full dilation?    All of these progress reports feed the fascination of everyone intimately connected to this  new life.  

Even after the baby is born, close friends anxiously wait for news of the babies progress.  First cry, first poop, first smile, first coo, first laugh, first solid food, first time to turn over,  first time to sit up, first crawl, first step, and especially the first word.   This is the stuff of the "fascination of fatherhood" and what makes it all so remarkable is that it's progress!  

What if believers were as fascinated over the progress of Christ being formed in our own inner man?  Why is there not as much anticipation and fixation with the progress of our spiritual life as there is with the development of our physical life?  Lack of appetite alarms parents in both infants and children, but the spiritual life of Christ being formed in us is too often malnourished with little concern.  

If believers were as fascinated with the progress of the inner man - Christ being formed in us - as parents are with their own precious new life, vibrant,   mature, Christians would not be as rare as they are.  Children who fall behind in physical and mental development normally get special attention because their lack of progress raises an alarm in those closest to them.  

May The Lord brings us to the place where we are just as concerned about healthy spiritual development as we are about fawning over physical and mental progress when we enter the "Fascination of Fatherhood"!