I built a tiny house. You read that right. 140 square feet of tiny living space. More specifically, my Dad and I built a tiny house on wheels from the car trailer up. I wanted to be on the road working from anywhere my house could be legally parked. For a year, I slept in my tiny home fully aware of the cycles of the moon and sometimes painfully aware of the temperatures outside.

After moving into an apartment, my house sat in my parent’s backyard for three years taking up lawn space and functioning as an expensive playhouse for my nieces. Then one day my Dad called and said, “I think it’s time to sell the tiny house.”

My head knew it was time, but my heart put up a fight.

• We built that.
• What is it even worth?
• Who will want it?
• How do I post something like that?

 
I set up a listing and instantly received messages of inquiry. With just two of the shortest home tours available on the market, someone decided to buy my tiny house. Suddenly, I had an amount of money I had never received at one time, and I watched as my tiny home was hauled away.

How often do you see the end results of a situation and assume something about the beginning or the middle of it? I know I do.

Let’s talk about Noah. He built an ark, saved his family and all the animals, and now we have rainbows, right?

Well, Noah was a “righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God” (Gen. 6:9). God asked Noah to build something that seemed crazy – a giant ark big enough for every kind of creature and his family of remaining humans. “Noah did everything just as God commanded him” (Gen. 6:22). Some experts suggest it might have been 55 to 75 years to build the ark while others propose it took almost 100 years to build! 

We rarely talk about that part of the story. (Or the patience of Noah’s wife, am I right?)

When the flood came, “the waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days,” and every human and animal not on the ark died (Gen. 7:24). Imagine 150 days of flooding while you’re on a large boat with your entire family and all the creatures of the world. That sounds crowded. The water starts to go down, Noah sends a dove, and it returns without a place to perch. They wait. Seven days later, Noah sends another dove and it returns with a branch. They arrive safely on dry land, build an altar to the Lord, and God makes a covenant to never destroy all the people again (Gen. 9:11). It's an amazing moment in history and Noah got to see it from beginning to middle to end.

The building process wasn’t just a little longer than the time on the ark. Noah spent potentially 100 years building the ark to be on it less than one year. What a long process. Build and wait. Build and wait.

My Dad and I took one year to build my house (clearly much smaller than the ark). I remember a cold November day when I did NOT want to keep going. I was tired of waiting during the season of building. As my house pulled away last week, I felt uniquely aware of its beginning, its middle, and the end of our time together. That house is forever a part of my story.

You might not know what part of the story you are in right now. You might be tired of waiting and building. You might be exhausted in the mundane middle. You might be moments away from the dramatic provision you could not have imagined. Hang in there. 

In a culture that wants you to have what you want today, don’t be afraid to wait on God. Through the wait, God will build your character, increase your confidence in Him, and he might even surprise you with an abundant blessing.

If nobody has told you yet today, you are loved.

All references in NIV.