Some Things Take Time

Working on the farm in Alabama, I’ve been thinking about some of our sawtooth oaks. I remember them as saplings, small trees with a whole lot of growing ahead of them. Now, they have grown into full trees, and the ground beneath them is scattered with acorns. What once needed tending is now offering its own abundance.

Of course, this didn’t happen all at once. There were years of growing that were easy to miss. Roots reaching deeper. Branches stretching a little farther. Season after season, the trees were becoming what they could not yet show us.

Yes, some things take time.

I can recognize this on the farm more easily than I can recognize it in myself. Perhaps you can, too. We want to know that our efforts are making a difference, that our prayers are going somewhere, that the work of healing or becoming is actually taking hold. We look for fruit, sometimes forgetting how much life must happen before there is anything to gather.

Jesus speaks often about seeds and soil, vines and branches. I wonder if part of his invitation is to learn to trust the pace of a living thing. To abide. To receive the nourishment available today. To believe that God is at work even when we cannot measure the growth.

This is part of why, at Christ Church, we are so committed to being grounded in faith, nurtured in community, and living with purpose. These commitments give us somewhere to put down roots. They help us receive what we need and offer what we can. They are the soil for our goodly abiding through all the seasons of our lives.

Perhaps you are in a season of new beginnings. Perhaps you are carrying grief, tending a relationship, or waiting for something you cannot hurry. Wherever you find yourself, remember this: there is grace for the season you are in. You do not have to produce the fruit of another season to be faithful in this one.

So be patient with yourselves. Keep praying. Let others care for you. Do the small good that is yours to do today.

Yes, and let's allow those oaks remind us that there is always more happening than we can see. And, in time, what has been quietly growing may become nourishment for a world beyond ourselves.