Recently, I had the privilege of leading our young adult Bible study through the book, “Always True: God’s Promises When Life Is Hard”, by James Macdonald. I would strongly recommend this book for a small group study or just for your personal use. The six promises that he focuses on are as follows:

1. I will not fear; God is always with me.2. I will not doubt; God is always in control.
3. I will not despair; God is always good.
4. I will not falter; God is always watching.
5. I will not fail; God is always victorious.

Life is all about a process and sometimes we just need to be reminded of the simplistic, and yet timely promises that God has given us. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” When the process begins to take a little bit longer than expected there can be times when it’s hard to trust, when it seems easier to think things through on our own, or when it seems easier to just acknowledge that we feel that our ways are better. As a planner and a thinker I am guilty of this quite often.

A friend of mine shared something with me that God had laid on his heart and I recently shared this with our young adult Bible study a few weeks ago. In so many words he said that God’s “heart is brooding over you like a mother hen broods over her eggs while they are hatching. If she helps them too soon, they will die.” Now, I have the foggiest ideas about anything farm related. I know that I like farms and our family has an old farmhouse where my grandmother was raised but that’s where my knowledge ends. My research has found that it takes about 20-21 days for the chicks to hatch but all the while the mother hen is brooding over those eggs, almost in a trance-like state, until the timing is right. I had no words for those at the Bible study other than, “keep incubating, I guess.” It brought about a few cackles (sorry, had to do it.) But, really, what else is there to do than to keep incubating?

A friend of mine, Nicole Sewell Fairchild, posted this on her Facebook page today and it in essence describes the incubation process of Jesus. Here it is:

It occurred to me, when I was reading a devotional about the birth of Christ, that God took His time in the redemption story. Jesus didn’t just come and offer the sacrifice of his own blood in a couple of hours, or days. Jesus grew up just like any child grows. He went through adolescence and early adulthood. This process of offering redemption lasted about 33 years.

I get so busy and rushed. I want answers quickly and I tend to see little reason to “waste time.” If I’m not *productive* then I interpret that as being wasteful. It is easy for me to think that Jesus could have done so much more if He had used every precious moment to its fullest. He could have begun his ministry at 14 or something! But He was allowed the time to grow, experience, observe, hurt, struggle and find joy. He lived at a very different pace than we do. The time spent in preparation was not a waste, even though it might have looked uneventful to my eyes if I were observing a month of his 20th year of life.