The last week of the year has a way of telling the truth.
The noise fades. The plans pause. And suddenly we’re left alone with our prayers from January. The ones we whispered with hope. The ones we repeated with persistence. The ones we eventually stopped mentioning out loud.
This is the week when many of us quietly ask, Did anything actually happen this year?
We believed.
We prayed.
We waited.
And from where we’re standing, it can feel like God stayed still.
But what if He didn’t?
Scripture has a frustrating habit of showing us that God often does His most important work when it looks like nothing is happening at all.
Take Joseph. From the moment he received his dream, everything moved in the opposite direction. Betrayal. Slavery. Prison. Years passed with no visible progress toward what God promised. If you had asked Joseph in year two, or year five, or year ten whether God was “doing something,” the evidence would have been thin.
Yet when the moment came, Scripture doesn’t say God suddenly showed up. It says God had been preparing the ground all along.
David lived a similar paradox. Anointed as king, then sent back to the fields. Promised a throne, then hunted like an animal. The gap between God’s word and God’s timing stretched so long it could have snapped faith in half. And still, God was shaping a king’s heart in caves and exile, not palaces.
We love the parts of the Bible where God acts decisively and visibly. We struggle with the chapters where obedience feels unrewarded and silence feels loud.
This year may have been one of those chapters.
Maybe you prayed for healing and instead learned how to endure.
Maybe you asked for clarity and received confusion.
Maybe you believed God would move quickly, and He chose to move deeply.
The uncomfortable truth is that God rarely works on our preferred timeline, but He is astonishingly committed to our formation.
Silence is not absence. Waiting is not neglect. Stillness is not inactivity.
There’s a line in Isaiah that says, “The Lord is the everlasting God… He does not grow tired or weary.” The implication is subtle but important. God doesn’t pause because He’s unsure. He doesn’t delay because He’s distracted. When He seems quiet, it’s not because He stepped away.
It’s because something is being built beneath the surface.
Roots grow in darkness. Seeds split open underground before anything green dares to show itself. Most of God’s work is invisible by design.
And yet, this is where faith strains.
Because we want signs. We want progress we can measure. We want evidence that the year wasn’t wasted, that the prayers weren’t misheard, that our obedience mattered.
The end of the year tempts us to grade God’s faithfulness based on outcomes. But Scripture invites us to look at something else entirely: obedience, endurance, trust.
Hebrews tells us that many heroes of faith died without seeing what they were promised. Not because God failed, but because faith isn’t always rewarded with immediate results.
That’s hard to accept in a culture that celebrates speed, growth, and visible success.
But Christianity has always been a long obedience in the same direction.
So what if this year wasn’t about arrival?
What if it was about preparation?
What if the thing you’re waiting for requires a version of you that God has been quietly shaping all along?
It’s possible that God answered your prayers, just not in the way that would have made a good testimony reel.
He may have been strengthening discernment instead of changing circumstances.
Deepening humility instead of granting relief.
Teaching dependence instead of independence.
Those aren’t flashy outcomes. They don’t photograph well. But they last.
As the year closes, it’s okay to grieve what didn’t happen. Faith does not require pretending disappointment doesn’t exist. The Psalms are full of holy frustration, unanswered questions, and raw honesty.
But before we decide that this year was empty, it might be worth asking a gentler question.
What if God was doing something… even when it looked like nothing?
What if obedience mattered more than outcome this year?
What if endurance was the victory?
What if the silence was not rejection, but invitation?
The last week of the year doesn’t demand conclusions. It invites reflection. It asks us to hold mystery without rushing to resolve it.
We may not see the full picture yet. Most biblical characters didn’t. But we are still part of the story.
And if Scripture teaches us anything, it’s this: God is rarely late, never absent, and always working in ways we don’t immediately recognize.
But what do I know?
Only that faith has always required trust in the unseen, especially when the year ends without clear answers.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
The noise fades. The plans pause. And suddenly we’re left alone with our prayers from January. The ones we whispered with hope. The ones we repeated with persistence. The ones we eventually stopped mentioning out loud.
This is the week when many of us quietly ask, Did anything actually happen this year?
We believed.
We prayed.
We waited.
And from where we’re standing, it can feel like God stayed still.
But what if He didn’t?
Scripture has a frustrating habit of showing us that God often does His most important work when it looks like nothing is happening at all.
Take Joseph. From the moment he received his dream, everything moved in the opposite direction. Betrayal. Slavery. Prison. Years passed with no visible progress toward what God promised. If you had asked Joseph in year two, or year five, or year ten whether God was “doing something,” the evidence would have been thin.
Yet when the moment came, Scripture doesn’t say God suddenly showed up. It says God had been preparing the ground all along.
David lived a similar paradox. Anointed as king, then sent back to the fields. Promised a throne, then hunted like an animal. The gap between God’s word and God’s timing stretched so long it could have snapped faith in half. And still, God was shaping a king’s heart in caves and exile, not palaces.
We love the parts of the Bible where God acts decisively and visibly. We struggle with the chapters where obedience feels unrewarded and silence feels loud.
This year may have been one of those chapters.
Maybe you prayed for healing and instead learned how to endure.
Maybe you asked for clarity and received confusion.
Maybe you believed God would move quickly, and He chose to move deeply.
The uncomfortable truth is that God rarely works on our preferred timeline, but He is astonishingly committed to our formation.
Silence is not absence. Waiting is not neglect. Stillness is not inactivity.
There’s a line in Isaiah that says, “The Lord is the everlasting God… He does not grow tired or weary.” The implication is subtle but important. God doesn’t pause because He’s unsure. He doesn’t delay because He’s distracted. When He seems quiet, it’s not because He stepped away.
It’s because something is being built beneath the surface.
Roots grow in darkness. Seeds split open underground before anything green dares to show itself. Most of God’s work is invisible by design.
And yet, this is where faith strains.
Because we want signs. We want progress we can measure. We want evidence that the year wasn’t wasted, that the prayers weren’t misheard, that our obedience mattered.
The end of the year tempts us to grade God’s faithfulness based on outcomes. But Scripture invites us to look at something else entirely: obedience, endurance, trust.
Hebrews tells us that many heroes of faith died without seeing what they were promised. Not because God failed, but because faith isn’t always rewarded with immediate results.
That’s hard to accept in a culture that celebrates speed, growth, and visible success.
But Christianity has always been a long obedience in the same direction.
So what if this year wasn’t about arrival?
What if it was about preparation?
What if the thing you’re waiting for requires a version of you that God has been quietly shaping all along?
It’s possible that God answered your prayers, just not in the way that would have made a good testimony reel.
He may have been strengthening discernment instead of changing circumstances.
Deepening humility instead of granting relief.
Teaching dependence instead of independence.
Those aren’t flashy outcomes. They don’t photograph well. But they last.
As the year closes, it’s okay to grieve what didn’t happen. Faith does not require pretending disappointment doesn’t exist. The Psalms are full of holy frustration, unanswered questions, and raw honesty.
But before we decide that this year was empty, it might be worth asking a gentler question.
What if God was doing something… even when it looked like nothing?
What if obedience mattered more than outcome this year?
What if endurance was the victory?
What if the silence was not rejection, but invitation?
The last week of the year doesn’t demand conclusions. It invites reflection. It asks us to hold mystery without rushing to resolve it.
We may not see the full picture yet. Most biblical characters didn’t. But we are still part of the story.
And if Scripture teaches us anything, it’s this: God is rarely late, never absent, and always working in ways we don’t immediately recognize.
But what do I know?
Only that faith has always required trust in the unseen, especially when the year ends without clear answers.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
