Have you ever felt like you were wasting time? That you wished your life was somewhere else?

This happens a lot for us personally, in our jobs, finances, relationships and even in our churches.

We don’t have kids and look forward to the day when we have kids. Then we have kids, and we look forward to when they’re older and we get more sleep. Then when they move out of the house, we long for the days they were around.

Our career feels like it has hit a stand still, and we wish that we could get promoted, find a new job, make more money, finish school, stop being overlooked, use more of our gifts, talents or education, but it seems like it isn’t happening.

We often see time as wasted when it is really preparing us for what is next.

It is easy to feel like we aren’t moving forward or that we are at a standstill. It isn’t that we are moving backwards; we just don’t feel like we’re moving.

Yet the time we spend today is what prepares us for tomorrow and what lies beyond that.

We feel like we are taking wrong turns or making U-turns, but sometimes you have to make a U-turn to get to where you’re going.

That isn’t easy to handle and often doesn’t feel like we are moving forward, but what feels like wasted time to us, or the in-between, is not wasted time to God. Often that is the time of preparation.

The problem is that we often don’t see that until the season is over. What if we went into life and into those seasons knowing that and acting that way? What if, right now, you looked at your life not with longing for what will come, but seeing what all you can gain out of where you are? How can you appreciate right now?

In Psalm 37:3 – 6 it says:

Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.