“You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!”

 

Even if you’re a non-smoker like I am, if you grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s, you will likely remember this slogan for Virginia Slims cigarettes—all too clever marketing targeted at women. This age of the female gender gaining equality with men, women’s rights, and the sexual revolution brought with it these symbols of what the world regarded as “elegant” or “sophisticated.” Any “modern” woman aspired to look like the cultural images portrayed in such advertising.

This phrase came to mind last summer when I spent an evening with my graduating class for our 50th high school reunion. Such an event is a rather “normalizing” occasion in which all present meld again into just “Ann, the girl whose father died when we were in the third grade,” or “Jim, the farm boy with red hair and freckles.” It seems almost impossible to put into dinner conversation a full explanation of how far we’ve come as adults along the road of life since those days. We have just come way too far.

We can see how far we’ve come in a much more beneficial way by examining our spiritual growth. We look back at commitments we made to Christ as teenagers and the “young love” we experienced toward Him then, as compared to the mature walk of faith we strive for now. Or, we look back to see how drastically different we lived without Christ in our youth to our days of walking with Him faithfully now.

If you journal your faith life, you can benefit from looking back into your old volumes and see how far you’ve come. God wants us to grow. He wants mature servants. He works His grace in us in all its various forms and wants us to join Him in working that grace out in our lives.

I am reminded of the Parable of the Talents in which a wealthy landowner called in his servants and entrusted his property to them in the form of talents. He expected them to invest and grow the trust He had given them. He rewarded those who put the talents to work, and threw the servants out as “worthless” who only buried their talent.

At the end of our lives, He wants to speak to us the words from Matthew 25:23:

“Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”

Sophistication, an elegant look, a culturally acceptable persona do not come close by comparison. But, if we’ve walked faithfully with Christ, we can still say “You’ve come a long way, Baby!”