Process of Progress

“In order to progress you must accept the process.”

Loren Thornburg

We all want progress but very few want the process it takes to get there.  The process is the road between where you are now and where you want to be.  Unfortunately, for most things it is not as fast as we would like.  I recently climbed “the incline,” a famous vertical in Colorado Springs.  In just under a mile you climb 2000 steps and 2000 feet of elevation.  When you look up you can’t even see the top of the climb.  It seems never ending and yet when you keep taking one more step you eventually arrive at the top.  As you keep taking steps you look back and you realize how far you have come.  I am encouraged when I do this in my own life, looking back to how far I’ve come in the last year.  When I see the ways I’ve changed and grown it encourages me to keep moving forward.  I couldn’t see them in the midst of the slow process, but now looking back I can see.  Just as the incline didn’t seem like each step was getting me very far so it doesn’t in my life.  Yet, I made it to the top and so I will keep stepping in life knowing it is getting me closer to where I want to be.  

“We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working.”

1 Corinthians 3:5-9 Message

I wish every process was as short as climbing the incline.  Often the process seems so long it’s hard to celebrate any level of progress.  The pain of the climb becomes too much and too hard to continue to endure.  Yet, it is God that makes it worth it.  With Him it’s not about the progress we are working towards, but about serving Him.  He measures our climbs so much differently than we do.  You are in search of progress and He is in search of you.  You are the progress and your heart is the goal, much more than any destination you are searching to reach.  So keep climbing, keep working, and keep looking back; but look to Him rather than your process to determine your progress.  He is at the center of this process and He is what makes it worth continuing.  It’s not how far you’ve come or how far you can go, but Who you go with and Who goes with you.  Whatever your climb, enjoy the One who goes with you and makes it all worth it.