Watching Storms

7.21.2014

Every year in July, we go with Katey’s family to Emerald Isle, North Carolina. We spend a lot of time resting, sharing meals, talking, and watching the ocean from the porch. I love and savor these slow times.

As I sat watching a storm roll in one day, I was struck by how slowly it moved and transformed. Over the course of an hour, the darkness moved towards me over the bright ocean. The lightning and distinct shadows of rainfall dotting the white horizon seemed hardly to move, and yet the cloud grew larger imperceptibly. It is the way in which God intended nature that I see the fault in us humans to hurry life along.

Even in spiritual growth, I often pray speedily, counting on spiritual fruit to be grown swiftly. I think it is no mistake that in Galatians 5, Paul articulates the fruit of the spirit. I pray often that I would grow in love and kindness, expecting these virtues to have grown in a week. But who has ever watched an apple grow in a week? It requires the planting of the seed, the searching of the roots, the growing of the trunk, the slow formation of the branch, and seasons of poorly grown apples before a sweet one can be picked.

It is with this thought that I trust God in his workings of time. Though he exists outside of time, he has formed it and governs it. He will cultivate fruit in us in due time.