All of a sudden doesn't happen all of a sudden

​I watched Notre Dame win the NCAA men's lacrosse championship yesterday. It was the first championship in the history of their lacrosse program.

Lacrosse outsiders looking in may have wondered where that came from. Notre Dame lacrosse can't be confused with Syracuse or Johns Hopkins or Virginia when it comes to winning championships.

It would be a mistake, though, to think it came all of a sudden.

Notre Dame's coach, Kevin Corrigan, has been the Notre Dame head coach for 35 years.

That's 12,775 days.

For 12,775 days, he's gone to work building a chance to lift up the trophy he and his team lifted after beating Duke yesterday. For 34 seasons, the end result was not a championship, but all 34 of those seasons were building toward season 35: a championship season.

I get in seasons of my life when I want something to happen all of a sudden. And because that all of a sudden thing is NOT happening all of a sudden, my life can feel incomplete. It can feel slow, or even at times like it's moving backwards.

Steven Furtick says, "in the times when it doesn't come suddenly the hand of God is holding me steadily."

I think sometimes it's helpful to recognize in the moments when life feels incomplete that God is beside us completing that moment. And building something with that moment.

All of those kids celebrating on the field yesterday, and all of their coaches - they all had paths steadily engineered to land them in a championship moment.

I know their paths were filled with moments that felt incomplete. I know their paths were filled with moments that felt like life was going nowhere. I know their paths were filled with moments when they had no idea they were building and not struggling.

Maybe you aren't in the moment you want to be in right now, but God wants to be with you in this moment. And God wants you to know that this moment is a really important building block for moments that are on the way. And God wants you to know that when your moment comes, it didn't come all of a sudden.

For our lives are not complicated by struggle, they are engineered on the foundation of it. Our lives are not delayed by the waiting, they are engineered on the foundation of it. But we don't have to wait or struggle alone.

The Engineer is with us. Holding our hand. Reminding us that all of a sudden doesn't happen all of a sudden.

It happens steadily.