I’m very fortunate to live in a bay area. There’s plenty of good quality accommodation, restaurants, coffee shops all topped off with a lovely waterfront view. I wish I could take the credit for moving there but it was all my wife’s idea – another reason why she’s brilliant.

With such a desirable location, property developers can’t build housing fast enough. There’s building sites everywhere. On a drizzly January day, the piles of sand and rubble and muddy JCB’s look unwelcoming and dirty.

In 8 months time though, when the builders and electricians and plumbers and interior designers have all worked their home-making magic, the cold dirt and water will have been replaced by glossy worktops, warm fires and power showers. Children will grow up safe in those spaces, marriages will flourish, families built with long nights of friendship, stuffed with good food, soppy films and sleepovers. The building site will be a forgotten past, compared to the memories made in those apartments.

It’s a reminder to all of us that most good things take time. And that often, the process of getting to the good thing doesn’t look particularly fancy or glamorous. In fact, it can look a lot like a building site on a wet January morning.

2 Corinthians 4:17 tells us that our “…light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”.  In other words, what it looks like now isn’t what it’ll look like in the future. Our earthly mess will someday be gone and all that remains will be eternal glory. Our brokenness, our sin, our darkness will all be swallowed up and all that remains will be life: full, happy, Jesus-life.

Let that encourage you today: what looks like a building site right now is actually accomplishing something wonderful. It might not feel good, it may not look pretty but what God is building in your life is more than you could possibly imagine.