Travailing and Prevailing...
Everyone wants to prevail. No one wants to travail.
I want to win. To succeed. To conquer. To accomplish.
I don't want to suffer. To toil. To grind. To fail while trying.
I've been watching the excavators digging and pushing and shaping the dirt on our new property for our new facility. It's a long and tedious process. It's slow, sometimes almost motionless in an age of movement. It's incremental, not exponential. Granular, not grand.
The response of our community was explosive on the first day the bulldozer started pushing and piling dirt. Things were moving and land was shapeshifting. The excitement was palpable and the difference easy to see in the sense of evaluating progress. But as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, all the underground work didn't evoke much of a response. In fact, I had people asking me when we were going to start seeing something "come out of the ground". I kept telling people that everything has to be right underground before things come out of the ground.
The unseen labor and travail of moving dirt and installing footers and anchor points, pouring cement deep down into ditches only to put more cement walls on those footers that will eventually be backfilled is nothing laudable, nothing noteworthy or remarkable. When the months of digging and pouring foundation comes to a conclusion, you still have drains, pipes, power lines, etc. The waterworks and earthworks component of building is nothing but travail. But without it, you "come out of the ground" in vain.
Ironically, in the last couple weeks masons finally came in and started laying block and the building started to take shape. The curb appeal was immediately acknowledged and my phone blew up with texts and emails and messages of excitement all over again. The steel was delivered and cranes began to erect each piece hour by hour. It was the easy energy, fast growth, quick deliverables.
We were finally "prevailing". Taking ground. Moving forward. Gaining momentum. At least this is the perception.
But we always were, even in the travail of preparation and foundation. Even in the long days of moving dirt from here to there. Even when important things were done underground and covered back up never to be seen again. The travail of doing the mundane thankless things takes discipline and determination. It takes people who live for more than what is seen, or rather, to know that what is unseen will be what holds up and together what is finally seen. The honor of travail isn't noted enough.
The importance of kicking the can down the road, of slow growth, of painful maneuvering, of grinding without noticeable growth...this is what leads to the prevailing moments that get all the attention.
When will we come to appreciate travailing as much as prevailing? I feel the burn inside my own bones as well. I want the easy fix and the serendipitous stroke of luck. I want a quick turn around or an expedited process to get to progress. Progress always gets applauded while process barely gets a head nod. But there is no such thing as progress without process, no success without strategy, no prevailing without travailing.
I pray that God always reminds me that he is in the whisper, not just the thunder. That his voice is "still and small" and it doesn't make it any less powerful that the "loud and big". I fear that I miss God and life as I'm waiting for the next loud thing and the next big thing.
Wouldn't it be a tragedy if we're constantly looking for grandeur and he's hiding in the granular? That he's in the valley of the shadow of death while we're scanning the mountain tops for his presence. That he is pulsating in the travailing while we are fixated on meeting him at the end in the prevailing.
Teach us your ways, God, for they are not our ways.
I want to win. To succeed. To conquer. To accomplish.
I don't want to suffer. To toil. To grind. To fail while trying.
I've been watching the excavators digging and pushing and shaping the dirt on our new property for our new facility. It's a long and tedious process. It's slow, sometimes almost motionless in an age of movement. It's incremental, not exponential. Granular, not grand.
The response of our community was explosive on the first day the bulldozer started pushing and piling dirt. Things were moving and land was shapeshifting. The excitement was palpable and the difference easy to see in the sense of evaluating progress. But as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, all the underground work didn't evoke much of a response. In fact, I had people asking me when we were going to start seeing something "come out of the ground". I kept telling people that everything has to be right underground before things come out of the ground.
The unseen labor and travail of moving dirt and installing footers and anchor points, pouring cement deep down into ditches only to put more cement walls on those footers that will eventually be backfilled is nothing laudable, nothing noteworthy or remarkable. When the months of digging and pouring foundation comes to a conclusion, you still have drains, pipes, power lines, etc. The waterworks and earthworks component of building is nothing but travail. But without it, you "come out of the ground" in vain.
Ironically, in the last couple weeks masons finally came in and started laying block and the building started to take shape. The curb appeal was immediately acknowledged and my phone blew up with texts and emails and messages of excitement all over again. The steel was delivered and cranes began to erect each piece hour by hour. It was the easy energy, fast growth, quick deliverables.
We were finally "prevailing". Taking ground. Moving forward. Gaining momentum. At least this is the perception.
But we always were, even in the travail of preparation and foundation. Even in the long days of moving dirt from here to there. Even when important things were done underground and covered back up never to be seen again. The travail of doing the mundane thankless things takes discipline and determination. It takes people who live for more than what is seen, or rather, to know that what is unseen will be what holds up and together what is finally seen. The honor of travail isn't noted enough.
The importance of kicking the can down the road, of slow growth, of painful maneuvering, of grinding without noticeable growth...this is what leads to the prevailing moments that get all the attention.
When will we come to appreciate travailing as much as prevailing? I feel the burn inside my own bones as well. I want the easy fix and the serendipitous stroke of luck. I want a quick turn around or an expedited process to get to progress. Progress always gets applauded while process barely gets a head nod. But there is no such thing as progress without process, no success without strategy, no prevailing without travailing.
I pray that God always reminds me that he is in the whisper, not just the thunder. That his voice is "still and small" and it doesn't make it any less powerful that the "loud and big". I fear that I miss God and life as I'm waiting for the next loud thing and the next big thing.
Wouldn't it be a tragedy if we're constantly looking for grandeur and he's hiding in the granular? That he's in the valley of the shadow of death while we're scanning the mountain tops for his presence. That he is pulsating in the travailing while we are fixated on meeting him at the end in the prevailing.
Teach us your ways, God, for they are not our ways.
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