It’s Worth the Wait

We seem to always be in a hurry. Get up, get to work, eat lunch, get back to work, pick up the kids, get dinner ready, sleep fast, get up and do it all over again. Whew! Our days are gone before we know it. How can it already be the week before Christmas? I was in the post office today – which was not as bad as you might imagine – and everyone was clam. Then I figured out why, the deadline for shipping things with a guaranteed delivery by Christmas had passed. Anyone who shipped today was lucky it their package arrived on time, so no one was in a hurry.

The true spelling of lucky is W – O – R – K! Hard work is what truly gets things done, no matter how frazzled or tired or frantic the day may feel. Those who put in the effort, for a long period of time, consistently, and no matter what anyone else does, those are the people who bear fruit. Just like this phrase reminds us, it is the slow growing trees that bear the best fruit. We are not a culture that rewards slow growing, we want it now!

Eventually now can get us in trouble. If we rush the good things they may not turn out very good. Convenience does not always produce a better product, and easy is not the best ancestor of quality. Good things take time, effort, energy, and they are often slow to materialize. For a country that loves new, young, fresh, exciting and avant-garde that slow growing tree is often overlooked ad forgotten. And yet…

One day that tree will be the tallest, the strongest, the biggest and bear the most wonderful fruit. Juicy, succulent, and the ones that make the best pies! That tree’s fruit will be sought out and coveted like no other. All that tree had to do was keep doing what it was doing over and over, slowly, inch by inch until it’s day arrived. No matter what was happening around it, it just had to keep growing slowly and strong. That is a good reminder for us all. Fast and furious does not make the best. It gets there faster of course, but is fast all we really want? Or do we truly want solid, fabulous quality. The best fruit is indeed worth the wait.