I was watching a documentary where some people visited the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya. The conservancy makes a concerted effort to maintain and in some cases, grow the population of endangered animals. The visitors viewed a baby rhino who was being bottle-fed by an employee. The employee explained that the rhino’s mother was deaf and unable to raise the baby. There were two employees who were specifically assigned to raising this baby rhino. They bottle fed the rhino every three hours and they slept alongside the baby every night. They would do this for 4-7 years until the rhino could fend for itself.
 
A meaningful reflection of Jesus happens when we walk with people for long periods of time.
 
I’ll be honest, the seven-year number caught me off-guard. Because the timeline of maturity in the animal kingdom is often much quicker than with humans, I was anticipating two years and they said almost four times that amount.
 
Long-Term Investment
Through the process of discipleship, God grows and matures His followers. That means, He intends to use you to help grow folks to spiritual maturity. When it comes to spiritual growth, we tend to have an amount of time we expect it to take and when it doesn’t happen in that amount of time, we tend to move on. This idea flies right in the face of time-specific studies and calendar programs we tend to run at church. We commit to lead the 8-week study and then disperse to a new group of people. We attend the spring semester of a Sunday school class, but then fade out as summer approaches.
 
Truth: To invest in the spiritual growth of another person it may require a longer timeline than we would expect, prefer, or even sign-up for. When we accepted Jesus, we signed up for the rest of our lives, which means, it really doesn’t matter how long it takes, because if Jesus has our heart, He has our calendar.
 
If a conservancy deems it worthwhile to devote two employees for around the clock service of a baby rhino for 7 years, might it be possible God would deem the spiritual growth of a person whose spirit will live for eternity even more worth a long-term investment.
 
Keep Reflecting Jesus!