All Good Things Take Time
I hesitate to make an absolute statement in saying that “ALL good things take time”, but it is kind of true. At least, all the good and healthy things worth having anyways.
A delicious meal involves time for planning, preparation, and cooking. Renovating a home requires time for demolition, picking out materials, designing a layout, and all the labor that goes into completing the renovation.
A successful career builds over time from hard work, education and/or experience, skill development, and personal sacrifice.
A strong relationship is formed only after two people spend enough quality time together. Our own healing journey spans a length of time that is full of prayer, therapy, reflection, encouragement, and support.
Yet engrained within our Western culture is a sense, no, an expectation of urgency. We don’t want anything to take longer than what we deem necessary or convenient.
The harm in this is, we become irritable, impatient, lazy and codependent upon immediate results.
We pass on incredible opportunities because of the time and work it will take. We throw away quality relationships because they aren’t moving as fast as we want. We walk away from God because He hasn’t given us what we want when we want it.
Our obsession with urgency has caused us to overlook a major element of life: process.
Process is built into the fibers of life.
God created the world through process and we see it in all facets of life. Humans and animals grow and develop through a gestational process. Plants grow through process. Learning motor and social skills is a process. Building relationships is a process.
There is no life, no good or healthy thing worth having, that does not need to go through some sort of process of growth and development.
Process is necessary and a part of God’s design for life that is not to be ignored or wished away.
Maybe if we understood process a little better it would be easier to accept it and, dare I say, long for it…
Process produces in us patience, character, wisdom, integrity, and resiliency. Both psychologists and the Bible agree that these are important assets and virtues to behold in life. (Just type “the importance of”, followed by any one of those words, in Google and you’ll get countless resources speaking to the value of possessing them.)
These are things that are not produced through urgency, but through time and effort.
In my own life, for the past 5 years, God has been taking me through a process of healing and growth. My divorce happened in 2020 but it wasn’t until just a few months ago that I was remarried. Could God have given me a new husband right away after the divorce? Sure, He could have; but it would not have been what was best for me. It might have made me happy in the moment but I would have never been taken through this most necessary process of healing and growth.
In that time, I’ve learned to rely on God and trust Him. I’ve come to recognize my own unhealthy mindsets and behaviors that need adjusting. I’ve developed better communication, grace, and love. I am a better individual, and my new marriage is stronger, because of the process.
“But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Peter 3:8).
God is outside of time, which means He doesn’t get impatient and rush things. His concern is not with time, it is with the process. He is focused on making you and your circumstance right. And that will take however long it needs to take.
Now here’s the best part of it all: God is right there with you through the process. He does not throw you in and say “go figure it out!” He walks with you and He guides you every step of the way.
The process is all part of the plan. Trust that God is using it to grow you and to develop your circumstances to prepare you for your future.
Next time impatience or doubt creeps in and you wonder what’s taking God so long, remind yourself that all good things take time.
-Stephanie Lauren Jordan
