JOIN USIt can happen that someone who is nearly 40 may be dubbed as being immature.
Maturity in life is connected with the attitude we adopt towards life and its many problems. It is our reaction to a given situation that is gauged as mature/immature.
Mature person’s attitude is one of equanimity. It is not to allow emotions to rule our life. It is to allow quiet thinking and well considered reason to sway our decisions and the actions that follow. Sometimes we get over excited and get carried away by what is happening around us. What are the reasons that should govern our decisions? Is what I should do now in accord with a good conscience?
Would it cause good or harm to my neighbour, to myself and to society at large? Is it, in other words, in keeping with moral laws?
Sometimes we may be drawn into the vortex of fast moving events that need our quick decisions. Such a quick decision would be a mature decision if the person taking the decision is a mature.
This maturity of course comes from practice and mature person always learns from past experiences. Even if the person had made a mistake in the past, the person would quickly apologise, correct the view and learn from the mistake to avoid it in future. So it is life lived in God, in conversation with him in silent prayer that helps us to be mature because there is someone with you who is wisdom itself and who has seen all that human beings have done in the past many centuries in very clime and country. With him to guide your decisions, quick though they may be, will be mature.
Pray to God to give you that wisdom and maturity which God gives to all young and old if but they know how to cultivate it. Jesus has declared:”I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and the understanding and revealed them to babes” (Mt 11.25).
So you may be young in age but you could be wise and mature. We have the story of Daniel a youth who, though he was only nine years old, gave a mature judgment in the case of Susanna who was wrongly accused of immorality by two old men to whom she had not yielded.
It was because God was with him that Daniel gave the correct judgment and everyone saw that the old men had lied (Cf. Daniel, chapter 13). It is also a reminder for older people that God can speak to us even through very young persons.
So if you are a youth do not feel diffident about your being only a youth. If God is with you can be very mature indeed.