Beautiful in Its Time

On a long summer evening, the Jones family welcomes Brother Thompson and Sister Beverly into their home for the first time as a courting couple. For Ana—who lives at full speed and loves nothing more than the good part—the slow, steady pace of their courtship feels like a wedding that simply will not hurry up. As the evening settles onto the front porch, with lemonade and lightning bugs and Pickles asleep between two chairs, Ana begins to wonder why something so good should take so long. Through Dad’s gentle devotion and Brother Thompson’s quiet confidence, the family discovers a season they hadn’t thought to treasure—and the truth that God makes everything beautiful in His time. A tender story about patience, presence, and learning to love the waiting. Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11 (KJV).

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Welcome to the Jones Family Chronicles. For life at school, home and church is always full of lessons, laughter, and love. Meet Dad, the pastor's assistant, Mom, the heart of the home, and their five bright and lively kids. Allison, Addison, Anna, Ava Grace, and little Andy, who somehow always managed to turn ordinary days into extraordinary adventures. So gather round, open your heart, and let's discover together the joy of faith, family, and the timeless truths of God's Word. This is the Jones Family Chronicles. All right, kids, gather close. Papa has a story for you about your favorite family, the Joneses. The evening it happened was one of those long summer ones that don't end so much as soften. School had been out for weeks, the windows are open, the sprinkler ticked in slow circles down the street, and the light came in gold and low across the kitchen floor. The Jones house was getting ready for company. Brother Thompson was coming for dinner, and he was not coming alone. Sister Beverly was coming with him, not as a neighbor passing by or a familiar face from the third pew, but as part of Brother Thompson's life now, which everyone in the house understood was a different thing entirely. Alison felt it as a project. She had the table set a full forty minutes early, her binder open beside the folded napkins, a small diagram inside showing exactly who would sit where. She had given the matter real thought, guests across from the window so they would see the yard. Andy beside mom so the milk would survive. In the corner she had written a small note to herself, don't reorganize the conversation. She was working on that one. Addison felt it as a detail. She had changed the centerpiece twice and now stood back from it, with one finger against her chin, deciding whether three jars of zinnias said something warmer than two. The zinnias weren't the point exactly. The zinnias were how she said welcome without having to find the words for it. And she wanted them to say it just right. Andy, well he felt it as trucks. He rolled one along the baseboard, announced vroom. To no one in particular then looked up the way he always looked up and asked Pastor Hopeful as ever, that any company at all might somehow turn out to be his pastor. When he learned it would be Brother Thompson and Pickles instead, he weighed it gravely and decided ball which was high praise actually. And Anna felt it as a countdown. Anna had been at the kitchen table since lunch with a stack of paper and the good markers and she was drawing a wedding. There was a cake with too many layers. There was a dog in a bow tie. That was clearly pickles. There was a girl in the front holding flowers who was unmistakably well Anna. How long do people court? she asked the kitchen in general. Before they get married. Mom, slicing tomatoes, said, Well it depends, honey. On what? Well on them. Anna considered this the way she considered most answers she didn't care for, briefly, and then not at all. Ava Grace had appointed herself in charge of the napkins, which she was folding into shapes that were not quite swans, but were trying very hard. Are they in love? she asked, folding. They're courting, Mom said. That's love taking its time. Ava Grace nodded slowly, the way she did when she had filed something away to think about it later. Time, she repeated, and started another almost swan. Anna, however, did not have much use for the taking its time part. She had already drawn the wedding. As far as she was concerned, the hard part was finished and everybody was simply being slow about celebrating. Brother Thompson and Sister Beverly arrived just as the light went amber. Pickles came first up the walk, trotting like he owned it and accepting Andy's enormous welcome, with the patience of a dog who had met toddl before. Dinner was loud and good. Dad asked everyone what had stood out about their day, the way he always did, his Bible resting on the side table within arm's reach the way it always was. Sister Beverly asked about Pawpaw first thing. She and Brother Thompson had been praying for his eye every single day. And was glad to hear he was much better. Ava Grace announced that the lightning bugs were starting early this year, which means something. Nobody asked what? When Dad went around asking what had stood out about the day, Addison reported that the Zinnias had in the end been three. Andy held up a green bean like a trophy and said Ball. Anna said the thing that had stood out to her was that Brother Thompson and Sister Beverly were both at the same table, which surely meant a wedding was coming soon, and did anyone happen to know exactly when? The table laughed kindly. And Dad said some things were worth not knowing yet. Anna did not find that especially satisfying. Afterward they drifted to the front porch, because that was where summer evenings went. Brother Thompson took one chair, Sister Beverly took the other. Pickles folded himself onto the boards between them and let out the long sigh of a thoroughly contented dog. And the lightning bugs were just beginning. It was, Anna thought, very nice, and way too slow. She watched them talk about the garden, about Sister May, about a hymn from Sunday. Sister Beverly laughed at something and rested her hand for a moment on the arm of her chair, and Brother Thompson smiled at the porch railing as though the railing had done something wonderful. And nothing happened. Anna waited. Still nothing happened. They just sat there, being happy. Slowly. She tried a few small questions first to help things along. Did Sister Beverly happen to like the color blue, for instance? Which would be useful to know, you know, for a dress, maybe. Did Brother Thompson know that the church fellowship hall could hold a great many people? Both of them answered her kindly and then went straight back to talking about the garden as though the garden was the most interesting thing in the world. Well, Anna could not hold it in any longer. So um when's the wedding? Anna asked. The porch went quiet in a soft sort of way. Picklesetta lifted one ear. Anna, Mom said gently. But Anna was already going the way she always went. Because you said yes, as she said to Sister Beverly, and he asked w and and everybody's happy and Pickles likes it, so why don't you just get married already? Why does it take so long? And then Anna heard herself. She heard the words sitting out there in the warm evening air, where she could not pull them back, and she felt the small quiet that had opened up on the porch, and her face went red. Anna, who was always moving, wasn't moving now. It was the kind of still the family had learned to notice. When Ava Grace was quiet, that was simply Ava Grace. When Anna was quiet, something was up. She looked at her hands. She thought about her drawing on the kitchen table, the cake with too many layers, the girl in the front holding flowers. She had spent the whole afternoon on the part that hadn't happened yet. She had been so busy hurrying everyone along toward the wedding that she had very nearly missed the porch, the lamplight, the lightning bugs, the dog asleep between two chairs, the sound of Sister Beverly's laugh in their own front yard for the very first time. She had been waiting for the good part, and she was sitting right in the middle of it. Brother Thompson did not seem upset. That was the first thing Anna noticed when she dared to look up. He was leaning back in his chair with his hands folded easy, kind of like papa does. You know, Anna, he said, I asked your dad something a while back before I ever asked Sister Beverly anything. He glanced at Dad, who nodded. I wanted to do this right. I wanted to do it not the fast way, but the right way. What's the difference? Anna asked, because she truly wanted to know. Brother Thompson thought about it. The fast way is all about getting to the end, he said. The right way is about not missing anything good along the way there. He looked over at Sister Beverly. And there's been an awful lot of good along the way there. Sister Beverly was the kind of person who said exactly what she meant. She leaned toward Anna, her voice warm and plain. Honey, I waited a long time for a porch like this one, she said. I'm in no hurry to skip past it. She smiled. The waiting isn't the part before the good part, Anna. Some of it is the good part. Anna didn't have anything fast to say to that. For once, she just let it sit there with her. As if to settle the matter, Andy patted out onto the porch in his pajamas. He said nothing about weddings and nothing about waiting. He simply found Pickle, sat down against the dog's warm side where the warm side already was. In the evening, that was already happening, and was perfectly content. Baw, he said softly, and patted the dog twice. Sister Beverly watched the little boys settle in and smiled. That one right there's got it figured out, she said quietly. He didn't go looking for a better porch. He came and sat down on this one. Later, when the company had gone home and the dishes were drying and the little ones were in their pajamas, Dad gathered them all together like he did every night. He reached over without looking. He always knew right where it was, and he opened his Bible. There's a place in here, Dad said, written about the written by the wisest man who had ever lived. He had everything a person could want, fast as he wanted it. And do you know what he finally figured out? He read, and his voice was unhurried. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven. Ecclesiastes three and one. He turned a few verses on further and said He hath made everything beautiful in his time. Ecclesiastes three and eleven. Dad set the Bible on his knee. Not beautiful right away, he said. Not beautiful the very minute we want it, but beautiful in his time. God doesn't waste a season, kids. Not even the slow ones, especially not the slow ones. Alison, who liked things to move in order and on schedule, frowned a little. But waiting feels like nothing's happening, she said. That's the trick of it, Nad said. Most of what God is doing you can't see while he's doing it. Doesn't mean it isn't getting made, he closed the book gently. Beautiful in his time, not ours. His time. Anna was sitting cross leg on the floor, unusually folded up. So the waiting is on purpose? she said. The waiting is on purpose, Dad said. The next morning Anna came down early, which was not like her, and got out the good markers, which was like her. She did not draw the wedding. She drew the porch. She drew two chairs and a dog folded up between them and a string of little yellow dots along the top for the lightning bugs, the two sweating cups of lemonade and a small girl off to one side just watching. Not in the front, not holding flowers, just there. At the bottom, in her most careful letters she wrote Tonight was good too. She didn't show anyone, she folded it once and walked it down the street to Brother Thompson's house, where the second chair sat on the front porch now like it had always belonged there, and she handed it to Sister Beverly without any speech at all. Which for Anna was its own small miracle. Sister Beverly studied it for a long moment. Off to the side, just watching, she read softly. That's a fine place to be at a story, Anna. You can see the whole thing from there. Anna walked home slower than she had walked anywhere all summer. She wasn't waiting on anything particular, and that was the strange part. The lightness of it. The wedding would come when it came, in its own time, and it would be beautiful. And she believed that now in a settled way instead of a hurrying one. But there was a whole season stretched out between here and there, full of porches and lemonade and a dog who had simply decided their family was his, and she didn't want to draw a single bit of it too fast anymore. Pickles had followed her halfway home, and then given up in a patch of shade. Anna sat down beside him on the warm sidewalk and did not move for a good while, which was for Anna about the loudest thing she could have said. Behind her down the street, two chairs sat side by side on a porch that had only needed one chair a season ago. There would be more seasons after this one. You could almost feel them coming. The way you feel a good rain that hasn't fallen yet. But those were for later. Tonight there were two chairs and a sleepy dog and a warm side walk, and well that was plenty. That night mom found her on the back step looking up at nothing. What are you doing out here, busy girl? Mom asked. Nothing, Anna said, and then because it was true, I'm getting pretty good at nothing. Ava Grace, who had wandered out behind her, considered her sister with the great seriousness of a five year old. Nothing is harder than it looks, she said, and went back inside. Anna stayed where she was a little longer, looking up the way Andy always looked up, and found that she didn't mind the quiet not one bit. From his chair inside, Papa chuckled when they told him all of it. The wedding cake with too many layers, the porch, the drawing folded once and carried down the street. She learned the thing it takes most folks a whole lifetime to learn, papa said. He glanced as it happened, at the small red ball on the table beside him, which he had been in no hurry at all to put away. That the good part isn't always up ahead. Sometimes you're already sitting right in the middle of it, and he pictured his family all gathered together, sitting in church, and he smiled. Now, who's ready for brownies?